Soft-wrapping at a specified margin?

[James Hague]

For editing text files I use the following settings:

set wrap
set wrapmargin=0
set textwidth=0
set linebreak

This works, except that the visual-only text wrapping occurs at the
far right side of the window.  To make text easier to read while
editing, I'd like to have the visual-only text wrapping occur at a set
character position (e.g., 80).

(Please note that by "visual-only" I mean that EOL characters are not
inserted as I type.  Setting wrapmargin to a non-zero value inserts
EOLs, so that's not what I want.)

[A.J.Mechelynck]

James Hague wrote:

> For editing text files I use the following settings:
>
> set wrap
> set wrapmargin=0
> set textwidth=0
> set linebreak
>
> This works, except that the visual-only text wrapping occurs at the
> far right side of the window.  To make text easier to read while
> editing, I'd like to have the visual-only text wrapping occur at a set
> character position (e.g., 80).
>
> (Please note that by "visual-only" I mean that EOL characters are not
> inserted as I type.  Setting wrapmargin to a non-zero value inserts
> EOLs, so that's not what I want.)

        :set columns=80

or
        :vsplit
        " then, using the mouse, adjust the vertical divide so that
        " our file's window is exactly 80 characters wide.

Note: AFAIK, "soft" wrapping in (g)vim can occur only as follows:
        - at the right margin of the file window ('wrap' on, 'linebreak' off);
        - at the last 'breakat' character before that point ('wrap' and
'linebreak' both on);
        - or not at all ('wrap' off).


Best regards,
Tony.