Vim

Vim and keyboard layout switching

All Vim commands need to be entered in English. This is a problem if the main text is entered in some other language because you often need to switch the layout. One of the solutions makes you get used to a new hotkey to switch layout. Also, there are many platform-dependent solutions with the call of various utilities. The goal of the vim-xkbswitch plug-in is to provide uniform behavior for many operating systems and languages.

vim-xkbswitch ›

The plug-in uses platform-dependent libraries to change the layout of the operating system. Currently supported are:

UNIX / X Server through the xkb-switch library
Windows 32/64bit, for which I had to make xkb-switch-win
Mac OS X via Xkbswitch-macosx

First, you need to install the plugin into Vim. Then you need to download these libraries and specify in the Vim config, where to download these libraries. For example, under Windows you need to do this:

Download and install the plugin: from here or from here
Download the language switching library (binary files for 32-bit and for 64-bit, about 5kb) and copy it to the root directory of the Vim
Add the following lines to vimrc:

let g:XkbSwitchEnabled = 1 
let g:XkbSwitchIMappings = ['ru']

We are approaching another interesting feature of the plugin - adding localized hotkeys. For example, if I press <C-N> v in the edit mode, I will see NerdTree. But if I edit the text in Russian, <C-N> м will be pressed and the plug-in will not start. However, if the plug-in option “g: XkbSwitchIMappings” is enabled, then the plug-in will move all the editing mode mappings to create similar localized ones, i.e. Will add <C-N> м for me.

By default, only the Russian language is supported from the box. However, the plugin can load language maps from a file, which will create localized imaps for any language. The charmapgen utility can help to do this under Windows.

If you want to get a working plug-in for another OS, then you need to make a Vim-compatible library.

Windows 32/64 xkb-switch-win ›

This article in Russian ›

Vim and keyboard layout switching

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