Automatically scroll screen in vim when near top/bottom?

Question

I would like to have smarter screen scrolling when I'm editing. When I reach within X number of lines from the top/bottom of the screen, I would like it to scroll the screen as I continue moving the cursor (so I can always see, at minimum, X lines below or above).

I know ctrl-y and ctrl-e will scroll, but is there a way I can have vim detect when I hit j or k how far I am from the top/bottom of the screen so it can move the screen as needed? I also know zz will center on the current cursor location, but I'd like there to be an area where it doesn't scroll.

Thanks.

Answer 1

From my .vimrc:

set scrolloff=3 " Keep 3 lines below and above the cursor 

Answer 2

You might to also look at scrolljump which sets the number of lines scrolled when hitting the "border" set by scrolljump.