How do I increase the spacing of the line number margin in vim?

Question

I have a problem with my colorscheme in vim:

The line numbers are too close to the code. How I can increase the width of the line numbers' right margin?

I'm pretty sure there's no option to affect that spacing. I'm surprised you think they're too close - that's the same one-character spacing every vim user has - but I'm aware it's a personal preference. I'd suggest making the numbers a lower contrast to get some aesthetic distance but it looks like you've already done that. — Cascabel, Mar 28 '10 at 05:32
Why don't you try making it so every line displayed has a space at the beginning of it (giving the appearance of a gap). Just make sure to remove that line on all save commands! — puk, Feb 16 '12 at 22:41

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 28 '10 at 23:12

This bothered me, too; I hate having text crammed up against a block of solid color. It makes me claustrophobic.

Here's what I did as a workaround (in MacVim, but I expect the same technique will work elsewhere):

In your preferred colorscheme, set the background color of the line-number column to be the same as the background color for normal text, and the line-number foreground color to something low-contrast and unobtrusive (so it doesn't look like it's part of your normal text). I use white-on-black for normal text, and dark-grey-on-black for the line numbers:

hi LineNr  guifg=#505050   guibg=Black
hi Normal  guifg=White     guibg=Black

Admittedly, this doesn't fix the problem so much as hide it, but it's worked well for me.

"claustrophobic" that's the word ! Feel the same here. Good workaround though — abernier, Feb 07 '21 at 08:25

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 09 '15 at 23:54

16

https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/src/screen.c#L2220

Looking at the code, it turns to be impossible (without patching the vim, obviously): vim always formats the line numbers to take up the whole available width, leaving just a single space afterwards (the "%*ld " format specifier in the code makes sure of that).

edited Dec 09 '15 at 23:54

Ethan McTague

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answered Mar 28 '10 at 20:54

Einar Lielmanis

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Why don't rigid vim developers change that? :/ – 71GA Mar 14 '21 at 20:24

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 28 '10 at 04:44

14

You can add the following line in your "~/.vimrc":

set nuw=6

Where "6" specfies the width of the column in terms of number of characters. Replace with a smaller or large number as needed. Only works with more recent (>=7?) versions of Vim, I think.

answered Mar 28 '10 at 04:44

Jeet

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This doesn't do what the OP is asking, it just makes the width of the number column bigger, moving them deeper into your text and thus 'worse' – radixhound Jun 13 '12 at 22:22
This is not an answer to the question. – mimoralea Jun 18 '13 at 23:04
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While not answering the question, it helped me do what I wanted to do when I was googling around. – mrfred Mar 07 '16 at 16:54

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 08 '21 at 08:09

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%left 5 in the vim terminal (% whole document, left distance code to linenrs, 0-infinity distance in monospace (= number of columns))

answered Sep 08 '21 at 08:09

Michael

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that's the correct solution but is there anyway to set it in `init.vim` or `.vimrc` file? – mohammad Jul 30 '22 at 21:04

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 09 '21 at 09:44

Here is solution 2 (ref to how to change the left margin in gvim)

Solution 1 (like %left 5 )just adds 'spaces' into the code area. I guess it does the same done by the threadstarter ...but it does not the answer the original question.

Solution 2: foldcolumn does the trick (foldcolumn is the column left from the linenumbers) In exec mode :set foldcolumn=12 If you want to change the color too (like in the ref) hi FoldColumn guibg=#003f3f (in the ref its FoldColumns, thats wrong).

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 08 '22 at 22:09

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Add the following line to you init.vim file.

autocmd VimEnter * :%left 5

answered Nov 08 '22 at 22:09

McRae Imaging

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this removes the left padding from each line of the file so the formatting gets a little off – Syed M Abbas Haider Taqvi Jul 22 '23 at 14:23

How do I increase the spacing of the line number margin in vim?

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