Cheat40: a cheat sheet for Vim

Cheat40 is a foldable extensible 40-column cheat sheet that you may open in Vim by pressing <leader>? (the mapping is customizable, of course). Mappings and commands are organized like the menus of a GUI app: there is a File section, an Edit section, a View section, and so on. For each item the description comes first, because one typically wants to find how to execute a task, not what the meaning of a key sequence is (there is Vim's help for that). Syntax coloring and the use of conceal keep the cheat sheet clutter-free and easy to read.

Installation

If your Vim supports packages (echo has('packages') prints 1), I strongly recommend that you use them. Just clone this repo inside pack/*/start, e.g.,

cd ~/.vim
git clone https://github.com/lifepillar/vim-cheat40.git pack/bundle/start/cheat40

Otherwise, use your preferred installation method.

Extending the cheat sheet

You may extend the cheat sheet by putting one or more files called cheat40.txt anywhere in your runtimepath (e.g., in ~/.vim). Cheat40 searches runtimepath for such files and concatenates their content. This allows plugin developers to provide a cheat sheet for their plugins by putting a cheat40.txt file in the top folder of their plugins.

If you do not want to use the default cheat sheet that comes with this plugin, set the following variable in your .vimrc:

let g:cheat40_use_default = 0

In this case, I recommend that you copy cheat40.txt into your .vim folder and modify it to suit your needs.

The syntax of a cheat sheet is very simple:

• foldable sections use Vim's default markers ({{{ and }}}) (see :h fold-marker);
• sections of the form About … {{{ … }}} are interpreted as block comments;
• lines starting with a # are interpreted as line comments;
• each line, except for comments and section markers, should be 40 columns wide (comments and section markers may be shorter than that);
• each item consists of a description, a key sequence, and a label;
• the description must fit in columns 1–25 (long descriptions may be split into several lines);
• the key sequence and the label must fit in columns 26–40 (long key sequences should be split into several lines);
• the label is a right-justified sequence of one or more characters (e.g., N for Normal mode, I for Insert mode, and so on).

See the cheat sheet inside the plugin for the details.