msgarea.nvim

An experimental proof-of-concept for a "msgarea" view similar to "minibuffer" in emacs (although I've never used emacs, so this is just my idea of what it is). It's built on top of Neovim's ui2 system, so Neovim >= 0.12 is required.

Warning

This is only wrapped up like a plugin for fun and convenience of installation. It's currently NOT a "plugin" in the sense that it will be stable or maintained.

The main idea

The Neovim 0.12 ui2 system introduced a new way for routing messages to different "views" as targets (e.g. "cmd", "pager", "msg"). While it's fantastic and eliminated the annoying "press enter" blocking messages, some messages are a bit too ephermal. Routing to msg only shows the message for a few seconds and requires you to click on the message window with your mouse to keep it alive. Routing to cmd shows the message in a convenient bottom view, but is immediately removed on cursor move. Of course, you can always press g< to refocus the last message in the pager, but in some cases, I find myself having to reopen and close the last message several times to reread because it doesn't stick around when exiting (for example when reading a lua error and then going to the line referred to in stack trace).

The solution presented here is a new view (msgarea) that is sits somewhere in between pager and cmd in terms of function. Setting a message target to msgarea will now open a "Messages" window below the statusline and automatically handle setting/resetting cmdheight when message content is emitted to the handler. Focusing the pager with e.g. g< still closes the "Messages" window, so that behavior is the same.

When I say msgarea, I mean the view or region of the screen below the statusline, where the "Messages" window is just one window that can be opened in the view. Here, any arbitrary window can be opened in the msgarea (see Usage and Examples), where the winbar provides clickable tabs to see which windows are active.

How it works

It's basically just monkey patching and autocmds... I patch vim.api.nvim_open_win() to now accept a relative = "msgarea" option in the win config, and patch require("vim._core.ui2.messages").msg_show to handle a new target "msgarea". Then, a bunch of autocmds handle the dynamic vim.o.cmdheight resizing based on the currently active windows in the msagarea (see require("msgarea").state)

Installation

vim.pack:

vim.pack.add({
  "https://github.com/edisj/msgarea.nvim",
})

Quickstart

This plugin does not export a setup() function. It is automatically enabled and modules are require'd lazily.

To configure, there are only three options:

• vim.g.msgarea_enabled, boolean (toggle plugin on/off)
• vim.g.msgarea_max_height, number (lines if >= 1, % of lines if < 1)
• vim.g.msgarea_min_height, number (lines if >= 1, % of lines if < 1)

vim.pack.add({ "https://github.com/edisj/msgarea.nvim" })
vim.g.msgarea_max_height = 15
-- vim.g.msgarea_max_height = 0.4    OR fractional heights 0-1 are percentage of editor height
vim.g.msgarea_min_height = 3
-- vim.g.msgarea_min_height = 0.1    same as above

-- if you use blink.cmp and want to have cmdline completions render in msgarea
require("msgarea.blink_integration").enable()
-- require("msgarea.blink_integration").disable()  -- can be disabled at any time

-- set a keymap to collapse the msgarea
vim.keymap.set("n", "<M-n>", function() require("msgarea").close_all() end)
-- two other api functions are available:
-- require("msgarea").hide()   hide (but do not close) all windows and collapse cmdheight 
-- require("msgarea").show()   reveal all windows and expand cmdheight 

Usage

There are 2 ways to use it:

1. Set targets you want to appear in the "Messages" window in require("vim._core.ui2").cfg.msg.targets:

can be done when enabling ui2, for example:

require("vim._core.ui2").enable({
  enable = true,
  msg = {
    targets = {
      default = "msg",
      typed_cmd = "msgarea",
      wmsg = "msgarea",
      emsg = "msgarea",
      lua_error = "msgarea",
      list_cmd  = "msgarea",
      lua_print = "msgarea",
      echoerr = "msgarea",
      shell_out = "msgarea",
      shell_cmd = "msgarea",
      shell_err = "msgarea",

      confirm = "pager",
      rpc_error = "pager",
    },
    msg = { timeout = 4000 },
    pager = { height = 0.75 },
  }
})

or sometime after you've enabled it:

-- assuming you already called require("vim._core.ui2").enable({ ... }) in your config
local targets = require("vim._core.ui2").cfg.msg.targets
for _, target in ipairs({
  "wmsg",
  "emsg",
  "typed_cmd",
  "list_cmd",
  "lua_error",
  "lua_print",
  "echoerr",
}) do
  ---@diagnostic disable-next-line: assign-type-mismatch
  targets[target] = "msgarea"
end

2. Open any window in the msgarea

The general idea is that any window can be opened in the "msgarea" view by setting relative = "msgarea" in the win config:

local buf = vim.api.nvim_create_buf(false, true)
vim.api.nvim_open_win(buf, false, {
  title = "Scratch",
  relative = "msgarea",
  height = 10,
})

The title field is removed from the window and instead used in the winbar as a clickable tab (left click focuses, right click closes). If no title is provided, there will be no tab in the winbar for that window. Each window "requests" a height, but the actual msgarea height will be set to the maximum across all active windows in the view (clamped to min and max height). This means if window A is set to height=8, and window B is set to height=10, 10 will be used for both windows, as this prevents "bouncing" when switching focus between windows in the view.

Here's a video where I demonstrate having multiple windows in the view:

mutiple_windows_demo.mp4

Examples

Here are some examples I use in my config that I find really nice:

● blink.cmp cmdline completions (like vertico in emacs)

This requires you to call require("msgarea.blink_integration").enable() somewhere in your config.

Note

if you want command descriptions like I have here see my blink config https://github.com/edisj/dotfiles/blob/8b17faf5f6882153e9456ecf4a6b69d9e042f777/linux/.config/nvim/plugin/4_plugins/blink.lua#L125-L178

cmdline_completions_demo.mp4

● picker (I use mini)

Just add this to your mini.pick config (or whichever picker you use that lets you set win config options):

require("mini.pick").setup({
  window = {
    config = {
      relative = "msgarea",
      border = { "▔", "▔", "▔", " ", " ", " ", " ", " " },
      height = 15,
    },
  },
})

● output of vim.system command

outputdemo.mp4

● quickfix list (2 example usecases)

• in edit->compile->edit context:

quickfixdemo1.mp4

• quickfix diagnostics:

quickfixdemo2.mp4

● terminal

Here's the minimal amount of code to set it set it up:

local buf = vim.api.nvim_create_buf(false, true)
vim.api.nvim_buf_call(buf, function() vim.cmd.terminal() end)
vim.api.nvim_open_win(buf, true, {
  title = "THIS WILL GO IN THE WINBAR",
  relative = "msgarea",
  style = "minimal",
  height = 15,
})

terminaldemo.mp4