Vem Statusline

Vem Statusline is a simple and fast statusline for Vim/Neovim.

It is designed to display essential editing information while not introducing any performance penalty into the editor.

It displays:

• Current active mode

• Current Git branch (requires vim-gitbranch or fugitive.vim)

• Filename (absolute, relative or relative to the root of the repository)

• Indentation type and size (tabs, spaces, tabs+spaces)

• File enconding (eg. utf-8, latin-1 or cp1251)

• Newline type (Unix: LF, Windows: CRLF, Mac pre-OSX: CR)

• Position in the file (line:column) and percentage progress through the file

The plugin is designed to be a very fast and small, and is oriented towards people that want a bit more information in the statusline than the one provided by default but that don't want to install a complex plugin for that.

Vem Statusline is a component of Vem, an alternative command layout for Vim, but it can be used independently from the Vem project.

Installation

You can use Vem Statusline straight away after installation. However, by default Vim only shows the statusline if there are at least two windows. So if you always want to have the statusline displayed, add this to your .vimrc file:

set laststatus=2

Also, since the mode can be shown now in the statusline, you may also avoid displaying the mode messages like:

-- INSERT --

at the bottom of the screen by also setting:

set noshowmode

Displaying the current Git branch name

You can optionally display the current branch of the repository you're working on. To do so you need a Git Vim plugin.

If you don't have any Git Vim plugin and just want to display the name of the branch, install:

• vim-gitbranch

This plugin by itchyny provides just the functionality to retrieve the branch name.

You can also install (if you don't have it already installed):

• fugitive.vim

by Tim Pope, which is a larger plugin to use Git from Vim.

If you have any of these two plugins, Vem Statusline will then automatically display the current Git branch every time you edit a file within a repository.

If you have any other control version system or a different plugin to integrate Vim with Git, you can also provide the name of a function that Vem Statusline should use to display the name of the branch. (See g:vem_statusline_branch_function at Configuration for more details).

Note: If you don't see the name of the branch and you have configured the plugin to do so, make sure that the value of the g:vem_statusline_parts variable contains a letter b (which is the value to display the branch name as explained in the next section).

Colors

By default, Vem Statusline uses the standard StatusLine and StatusLineNC highlighting groups, which means that the statusline colors will automatically adapt to your currently active color scheme.

However, you can also define specific colors for different parts of the statusline:

Highlighting Group	Default	Color for
VemStatusLineMode	StatusLine	Mode indicator
VemStatusLineModeInsert	StatusLine	Mode indicator (only insert mode)
VemStatusLineBranch	StatusLine	Current Git Branch
VemStatusLineFileModified	StatusLine	File modified indicator (*)
VemStatusLineFileRO	StatusLine	Read-only file indicator ([RO])
VemStatusLinePosition	StatusLine	Position indicator (line:col)
VemStatusLineSeparator	StatusLine	Symbols to separate elements (`

For example, for a dark themed statusline, you can add this to your configuration:

highlight StatusLine                cterm=none ctermfg=255 ctermbg=237 guifg=#e6e3d8 guibg=#373737 gui=none
highlight StatusLineNC              cterm=none ctermfg=243 ctermbg=238 guifg=#857b6f guibg=#404040 gui=none
highlight VemStatusLineMode         cterm=bold ctermfg=192 ctermbg=237 guifg=#cae682 guibg=#373737 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineModeInsert   cterm=bold ctermfg=117 ctermbg=237 guifg=#8ac6f2 guibg=#373737 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineBranch       cterm=none ctermfg=246 ctermbg=237 guifg=#999999 guibg=#373737 gui=none
highlight VemStatusLineFileModified cterm=bold ctermfg=192 ctermbg=237 guifg=#cae682 guibg=#373737 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineFileRO       cterm=bold ctermfg=192 ctermbg=237 guifg=#e5786d guibg=#373737 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineSeparator    cterm=none ctermfg=246 ctermbg=237 guifg=#999999 guibg=#373737 gui=none
highlight VemStatusLinePosition     cterm=bold ctermfg=255 ctermbg=237 guifg=#f6f3e8 guibg=#373737 gui=bold

For a light themed statusline, the configuration could be something like:

highlight StatusLine                cterm=none ctermfg=235 ctermbg=254 guifg=#272727 guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=none
highlight StatusLineNC              cterm=none ctermfg=246 ctermbg=251 guifg=#909090 guibg=#c8c8c8 gui=none
highlight VemStatusLineMode         cterm=bold ctermfg=30  ctermbg=254 guifg=#228080 guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineModeInsert   cterm=bold ctermfg=166 ctermbg=254 guifg=#d75f00 guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineBranch       cterm=none ctermfg=243 ctermbg=254 guifg=#777777 guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=none
highlight VemStatusLineFileModified cterm=bold ctermfg=30  ctermbg=254 guifg=#228080 guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineFileRO       cterm=bold ctermfg=167 ctermbg=254 guifg=#e5786d guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=bold
highlight VemStatusLineSeparator    cterm=none ctermfg=243 ctermbg=254 guifg=#777777 guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=none
highlight VemStatusLinePosition     cterm=bold ctermfg=235 ctermbg=254 guifg=#272727 guibg=#e8e8e8 gui=bold

Configuration

Some configuration options are offered to change the elements that are displayed and their format.

You can set these variables in your .vimrc file:

g:vem_statusline_parts: string (default: 'mbfienpP')

The value of this option specifies which elements of the statusline
have to be displayed. There's a letter per element and the plugin
will only diplay those elements whose letter is in this variable.

For instance, if g:vem_statusline_parts = 'mf' then only the
current mode and the current filename will be displayed.

The meaning of the letters is:

m: current mode
b: current branch name
f: current filename
i: indent type and size (tabs, spaces, tabs+spaces)
e: file encoding
n: newline type (Unix: LF, Windows: CRLF, Mac pre-OSX: CR)
p: position in the file (line:column)
P: progress in percentage through the file

g:vem_statusline_filename_format: string (default: 'P')

Format in which the current filename should be displayed:

t: only the filename without its path (tail)
p: full path (path)
.: path relative to the current directory
P: relative to the root of the current project directory. For example,
   if your project is in a Git repository the name of the filename will
   be shown relative to the folder where the '.git' directory is. To
   configure how to detect the root directory of the project use the
   option g:vem_statusline_project_marker. If the file is not within
   a project, the relative path to the current directory will be used.

g:vem_statusline_project_marker: string (default: '.git')

Name of a file or directory that can be used to define the root
directory of your project. To be used with the 'P' option of
g:vem_statusline_filename_format.

For example, for projects in Mercurial repositories you can use .hg and for
Bazaar, .bzr. Many projects have a setup.cfg file at the root too.

g:vem_statusline_branch_function: string (default: '')

Name of the function to execute to retrieve the current Git branch name. By
default, Vem Statusline will detect one of the following functions provided
by the following external plugins to display the current branch name:

gitbranch#name for [vim-gitbranch](https://github.com/itchyny/vim-gitbranch)
fugitive#head  for [fugitive.vim](https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive)

If you don't want to use any of those plugins or you use a control version
system different from Git (such as Mercurial or Bazaar), then you can use
this variable to specify the function that Vem Statusline should execute to
retrieve the branch name. For example, if the function that returns the
name of the branch is GetBranchName() you can add the following to your
.vimrc file:

    let g:vem_statusline_branch_function = 'GetBranchName'

g:vem_statusline_mode_separator: string (default: ' ~ ')

Symbol separator between the current mode and the branch/filename
elements. Not shown if the branch and filename are not displayed.

g:vem_statusline_branch_separator: string (default: ':')

Symbol separator between the current branch and the filename.
Not shown if the filename is not displayed.

g:vem_statusline_right_separator: string (default: '|')

Symbol separator between the indent, encoding and newline elements.

Alternatives

Vem Statusline is designed to be very small and fast. However, if it doesn't fit your needs, you can check other plugins which, while being significantly larger, allow you to completely define the elements of the statusline. Two popular ones are:

• lightline.vim: It allows you to define your own components and to completely configure the statusline.

• airline.vim: Large, full-fledged statusline plugin with lots of options and that integrates with many other popular plugins.

Alternatively, you could also consider creating your own statusline. It is not that difficult and doing so gives you a great deal of flexibility without having to install an extra plugin. Check :help statusline for more information.

Related projects

• Vem Text Editor: An alternative command layout for Vim.

• Vem Tabline: A plugin to show the list of buffers in the tabline.

• Vem Dark: A dark color scheme for Vim based on Wombat.