I intend to use gvim mainly as a text editor.
Unlike Emacs, with which you can read email, wash the dishes, and
get psychological counsel... ;)
(1) Is there a way to have a "soft" border or offset on the
left, so that the text is not flush against the left window
border? I've searched for hours with no luck. Autoindent
would put an actual space in there (which I wouldn't want).
I don't know of anything that will do exactly what you want,
but ":set number" might help.
Another alternative might be the fold-column. You can
:set foldcolumn=3
to give you three character-columns of left-hand margin. If you
use folding, they will then hold the fold-indicators.
:help 'foldcolumn'
It may have a funky color, but your colorscheme can be edited to
tweak the FoldColumn highlighting group
:help hl-FoldColumn
In gvim, there might also be the "signs" column, but, having not
used signs at all, I can't say I know the ins and outs of this
aspect of things.
(2) Is there a plug-in file especially for text? Already
configured for 79 spaces with linebreak etc already set.
I don't think one comes with the stock install, but one can
create one's own per the instructions found in
:help 43.2
where there is actually text regarding creating a "text"
filetype. There could be more there in terms of details, but it
should be enough to get a person started.
I have stumbled across a distribution with one version of Linux
that did provide a text type, but it only had a few basic items
like syntax-highlighting "TODO" and "XXX" blocks to make them
stand out...nothing terribly exciting.
-tim
