Using multiple views

Overview

When you start Howl, you’ll be presented with one window, containing one editor view. Assuming there is sufficient screen estate to spare, it’s often desirable to have multiple views open in the same window, which let’s you view one or more buffers simultaneously. This is supported in Howl, where windows can contain an arbitrary number of views, arranged in a grid pattern.

In the above picture you have two editors in the first row, each occupying one column each. In the bottom row you see one editor view occupying two columns. While the most you’ll likely ever want is around two or three separate view, you can divide windows up in unreasonable ways should you so desire:

There is currently no way to manually resize views; views are reflowed to fill the entire window, and will occupy the maximum amount of space available to them.

View commands

Below is a list of some useful commands that work with views:

Creating views

• view-new-right-of: Creates a new view, right of the current one.
• view-new-left-of: Creates a new view, left of the current one.
• view-new-above: Creates a new view, above the current one.
• view-new-below: Creates a new view, below the current one.

Navigating views

• view-left: Moves focus to the view left of the current one.
• view-right: Moves focus to the view right of the current one.
• view-up: Moves focus to the view above the current one.
• view-down: Moves focus to the view below the current one.
• view-next: Moves focus to the next view in the grid. Bound to ctrl_tab in the default keymap.

Each of the four directional commands above (view-left, view-right, view-up and view-down) have two additional companion commands:

• view-<direction>-wraparound

These commands will wrap around the grid if no view could be found in the specified direction. The view-right-wraparound command for instance would go to the view to the right, should it exist. If not, it would go to first view in the next row should that exist, and to the first view of the first row if not.

• view-<direction>-or-create

These will automatically create a new view in the specified direction, if necessary. For instance, the view-right-or-create command would go to the view to the right if there was a view to the right. Should no such view exist however, it would be created first. The last set of commands are bound to shift_alt_left + <arrow key> in the default keymap.

Manipulating views

• view-close: Closes/removes the current view. Bound to ctrl_w in the default keymap.

Next: Running external commands