Re: Vim lines… and poetry

Thank you for your answer. This is what I did :

- I created a small file testpoetry.txt with the aforementioned stanza
- I then typed :'<,'>s/$/\=repeat(' ', $COLUMNS-
strlen(getline('.')))/|'<,'>-1s/\n
- nothing happened, except a message :

4 substitutions on 4 lines
E486: Pattern not found: \n

- what did I do wrong (please have in mind my level in Vim is, well,
low) ?

Thanks again

Thierry

On Jun 20, 1:32 am, Tim Chase <v...@tim.thechases.com> wrote:
> On 06/19/2011 02:04 PM, ThG wrote:
>
> > I use Vim to write a book.
> > Each Vim line ended by a carriage return will be a paragraph of the
> > book. Thus a single Vim line (which is wrapped, e.g. with a 80
> > character screen in 10 screen lines) can end as a 15 line paragraph in
> > the book. But I have one problem : I want to make quotes of poetry,
> > such as (Coleridge RAM.2)
>
> A couple ideas occur to me.  The first side-steps your problem by
> using something more regularly-used in text-flow:  separate your
> paragraphs by 2 newlines as you did in your email (one blank line
> between paragraphs).  You can then choose some other scheme to
> number your lines (whether just getting a line-count or actually
> inserting line-numbers in the text).  Something like
>
>    :let cnt=0|g/\n\n\+/let cnt+=1
>    :echo cnt
>
> will tell you the number of double-breaks.
>
> > The only way I can think of is to type spaces to the end of the screen
> > line (e.g. 38 spaces for the first verse, 55 for the second, etc...),
> > which is both tedious and unable to cope with a 75 or 90 (whatever)
> > character screen
>
> This can be automated by selecting your poetic text and
> performing the following
>
>    :'<,'>s/$/\=repeat(' ',
> $COLUMNS-strlen(getline('.')))/|'<,'>-1s/\n
>
> (all in one line) which right-pads each line with the missing
> number of spaces, and then (separated by the "|") joins the N-1
> lines by removing the newlines from them.  You might have to
> strip trailing spaces before doing the whole thing if you issue
> the command multiple times over the same section after editing.
>
> > How can I proceed ? I have heard of elastic tabstops ? Are they
> > necessary ? Are they available for Vim ?
>
> I'm not sure what elastic tabstops are.  I tried setting
> 'tabstop' to $COLUMNS with
>
>    :let &ts=$COLUMNS
>
> and then joining each line, internally separated by tabs, but the
> result bound the tab to the character before it rather than the
> character after it, awkwardly coming out as
>
> The fair breeze blew, the white foam
> flew,
>                 The furrow followed
> free;
>                 We were the first that ever
> burst
>                 Into that silent sea.
>
> -tim

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