goyo.vim VS zen-mode.nvim

I wrote a manuscript in vim a couple Novembers ago, for NaNoWrimo. I used a couple plugins, primarily Goyo [1] to add some margins, but otherwise, yeah, plain vim.

I don't think it was really any more productive than my current workflow in Obsidian. Vim keybindings are more useful for editing than for writing (and for editing code in particular, where the changes you're making are much more structured). Also, while the extra features afforded by Obsidian don't really make a difference during the writing process, I find they're really useful for outlines and other preliminary work, which is something of a point against a vim-only workflow unless you want to use vimwiki [2] or something.

Granted, Obsidian is still a markdown-based tool, so there's still some level of minimalism going on there, but by that point we're really discussing markup vs word processors, which is its own conversation—and to my mind, a much more important one. I much prefer working in markup than in a rich text editor, because plain text is easy to edit and process through the terminal, and because it lets me separate style choices from content.

I find that the markdown live preview that editors like Obsidian and Typora provide (and which vim doesn't) is a really nice compromise between a slick composing experience and the technical affordances of markup. Between that and Obsidian's hypertext features, I think I'll stick with Obsidian for the foreseeable future.

[1]: https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim

[2]: https://vimwiki.github.io/

Maybe https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim could be useful then.

Goyo is a distraction free plugin for vim/NeoVim. https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim. Typically used for people wanting to write inside of NeoVim. There isn’t a real purpose for me to use it other than I like the aesthetic looks. Thanks for replying!

Maybe not of use, but what about just one of your editors + the terminal? Using vim with the goyo extension similarly without the overlay. I write my notes with markdown.

I haven't maintained a Vim config in a few years now (more of an Emacs man now), but I do remember using Goyo in college. Looking back at it, I think it might scratch your itch as far as Vim plugins go, it even allows you to resize the area on the fly.

https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim

I went from https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim to https://github.com/folke/zen-mode.nvim and now this

Can't see https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim mentioned anywhere in this thread.

This feels real similar in concept to limelight and goyo. Nice! 👍🏻

I use this sometimes and it's pretty nice: https://github.com/folke/zen-mode.nvim

This is super cool, I've been using https://github.com/folke/zen-mode.nvim for some time but what caught my attention were the side buffers for notes. I took a look at your configuration options and was wondering if you had thought about configuring the width by a fraction of the total view width?

I went from https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim to https://github.com/folke/zen-mode.nvim and now this

You could define yourself a variable whenever :ZenMode is toggled and check for said variable (or have a look here if anything is returned by the function is_open()).

Exactly right! I use Arch Linux with i3. My terminal emulators are alacritty and cool-retro-term, depending on the mood. For writing I use neovim with the zen-mode plugin.

However, I want to style this a bit more maybe have a better-looking tree on startup. One of the solutions I could think of is to open the nvim-tree in zen-mode. This ends up looking like this.

folke/zen-mode.nvim - Distraction-free mode