UTF-8 Configuration, Typing, Command Arguments, and Options in Nvim

displaying only works for the characters present in the selected font. Useful commands: - "ga" shows the decimal, hexadecimal and octal value of the character under the cursor. If there are composing characters these are shown too. (If the message is truncated, use ":messages"). - "g8" shows the bytes used in a UTF-8 character, also the composing characters, as hex numbers. - ":set fileencodings=" forces using UTF-8 for all files. The default is to automatically detect the encoding of a file. STARTING VIM You might want to select the font used for the menus. Unfortunately this doesn't always work. See the system specific remarks below, and 'langmenu'. USING UTF-8 IN X-WINDOWS *utf-8-in-xwindows* You need to specify a font to be used. For double-wide characters another font is required, which is exactly twice as wide. There are three ways to do this: 1. Set 'guifont' and let Nvim find a matching 'guifontwide' 2. Set 'guifont' and 'guifontwide' See the documentation for each option for details. Example: > :set guifont=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1 You might also want to set the font used for the menus. This only works for Motif. Use the ":hi Menu font={fontname}" command for this. |:highlight| TYPING UTF-8 *utf-8-typing* If you are using X-Windows, you should find an input method that supports UTF-8. If your system does not provide support for typing UTF-8, you can use the 'keymap' feature. This allows writing a keymap file, which defines a UTF-8 character as a sequence of ASCII characters. See |mbyte-keymap|. If everything else fails, you can type any character as four hex bytes: > CTRL-V u 1234 "1234" is interpreted as a hex number. You must type four characters, prepend a zero if necessary. COMMAND ARGUMENTS *utf-8-char-arg* Commands like |f|, |F|, |t| and |r| take an argument of one character. For UTF-8 this argument may include one or two composing characters. These need to be produced together with the base character, Nvim doesn't wait for the next character to be typed to find out if it is a composing character or not. Using 'keymap' or |:lmap| is a nice way to type these characters. The commands that search for a character in a line handle composing characters as follows. When searching for a character without a composing character, this will find matches in the text with or without composing characters. When searching for a character with a composing character, this will only find matches with that composing character. It was implemented this way, because not everybody is able to type a composing character. ============================================================================== Overview of options *mbyte-options* These options are relevant for editing multibyte files. 'fileencoding' Encoding of a file. When it's different from "utf-8" conversion is done when reading or writing the file. 'fileencodings' List of possible encodings of a file. When opening a file these will be tried and the first one that doesn't cause an error is used for 'fileencoding'. 'charconvert' Expression used to convert files from one encoding to another. 'formatoptions' The 'm' flag can be included to have formatting break a line at a multibyte character of 256 or higher. Thus is useful for languages where a sequence of characters can be broken anywhere. 'keymap' Specify the name of a keyboard mapping. ============================================================================== Contributions specifically for the multibyte features by: Chi-Deok Hwang <hwang@mizi.co.kr> SungHyun Nam <goweol@gmail.com> K.Nagano <nagano@atese.advantest.co.jp> Taro Muraoka <koron@tka.att.ne.jp> Yasuhiro Matsumoto <mattn@mail.goo.ne.jp> vim:tw=78:ts=8:noet:ft=help:norl:

This section provides guidance on UTF-8 configuration in Nvim, covering aspects such as selecting fonts, especially in X-Windows, and utilizing the 'guifont' and 'guifontwide' settings. It explains methods for typing UTF-8 characters, including using input methods, 'keymap', or directly inputting hex codes. It also discusses how commands handle UTF-8 character arguments, especially in searching for characters with or without composing characters. Finally, the section lists relevant options for editing multibyte files, such as 'fileencoding', 'fileencodings', and 'keymap'.