LiteDFM
A lightweight plugin to remove distractions from Vim.
This is based loosely on Distraction Free Mode in Sublime Text.
A key differentiator from most other implementations of distraction free writing in Vim is that support for vsplits remains uncrippled. This comes at the expense of proper centering, though, so there's a tradeoff.
Installation
For Pathogen:
git clone https://github.com/bilalq/lite-dfm ~/.vim/bundle
For Vundle, add this to your vimrc and run BundleInstall:
Bundle 'bilalq/lite-dfm'
Usage
There are 3 commands that are exposed:
LiteDFM
LiteDFMClose
LiteDFMToggle
For convenience, I would recommend setting up a mapping to quickly toggle.
nnoremap <Leader>z :LiteDFMToggle<CR>
If you dislike the fact that the last run command shows up as a message, use this mapping instead:
nnoremap <Leader>z :LiteDFMToggle<CR>i<Esc>`^
If you're a tmux user and really want to get fancy, this should interest you:
nnoremap <Leader>z :LiteDFMToggle<CR>:silent !tmux set status > /dev/null 2>&1<CR>:redraw!<CR>
Customization
Colors
You can manually specify the color to be used for hiding UI elements. There are two global variables that can be used to override the one that is normally detected. One is for CLI Vim, while the other is for gui Vim. You can set these in your vimrc like so:
let g:lite_dfm_normal_bg_cterm = 234
let g:lite_dfm_normal_bg_gui = '#abcabc'
If you are using a value of none for your background color, this is the only way you will be able to make this plugin properly hide your UI elements.
Left offset
This plugin doesn't center, but instead offsets text from the left. You can specify exactly how many columns you want this offset to be. Any value from 1 to 22 is valid. By default, 22 is used.
let g:lite_dfm_left_offset = 16
Keeping the ruler
You may prefer to have the ruler on when you have LiteDFM active. You can do so by adding this to your vimrc:
let g:lite_dfm_keep_ruler=1