From: Mauricio Fernandez <mfp@...>
Date: 2006-05-12T01:35:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Simplifying Vim folding

On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 08:07:38PM +0900, Doug Kearns wrote:
> G'day folks,
> 
> I was planning on simplifying the default folding provided when
> foldmethod=syntax.
> 
> Currently pretty much everything is folded but I was planning on
> reducing this to just module/class/method definitions, multi-line
> comments and __END__ data chunks, with an option to disable comment
> folding.
> 
> We could, of course, make this 'infinitely' configurable but I see
> little point. Is anyone particularly enamoured with having their
> multi-line regexes folded? ;-)

I've written a plugin that achieves something similar; it's a much improved
version of the vimscript I'd had in my .vimrc for a long time.

It is available at http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?simplefold+plugin+0.4.0
There are also a few animations comparing it to fdm=syntax and fdm=marker.

Some features:
* folds on module/class/method/{constant,attribute} definitions ("top-level folds")
  These folds are *not* nested, so methods inside a class are always
  visible, even when all folds are closed. This way zM gets you a high-level
  view of all of the file without having to open some module/class folds.
* I've added folding on if/while/until/blocks/etc ("nestable folds") (can be
  turned of, but it's not a problem since we have zO)
* top-level folds are enlarged to include preceding comments (good for
  RDoc'ed code)
* the use of a specialized foldtext achieves over 60% savings in vertical
  space over fdm=marker at the class level.
* it is possible to specify additional "top-level" folds with #{{{ / #}}} and
  additional "nestable" folds with {{{{ / }}}}.

-- 
Mauricio Fernandez  -   http://eigenclass.org   -  singular Ruby