vim: Add clickable label

Question

I know that in emacs it is possible to insert some kind of "clickable text". I.e. you can insert a text, that, when the user presses enter on it, opens another file.

Is there something like this for vim?

Answer 1

It is possible, but is filetype-specific. A best example will be vim's own help system that is nothing fancier than an unmodifiable buffer with specific mappings.

See vimwiki and vimorgmode for examples to have such links.

Answer 2

For simple ad hoc cases you could write a function to which opens a certain file based on the word under the cursor. You could then map this function to the double-click event.

For example:

function! CustomLoad()
    let word = expand("<cword>")
    let path = "/path/to/file/to/be/opened"
    if ( word == "special_keyword" && filereadable(path) )
        sil exe "split " . path
    endif
endfunction

And map it using:

nnoremap <2-LeftMouse> :call CustomLoad()<CR>

Thus double-clicking (in normal mode) on the word special_keyword will open the file /path/to/file/to/be/opened if it is readable. You could add multiple cases for different keywords, or do some text-processing of the keyword to generate the filename if required. (Note that the filereadable condition is not necessary, but probably a good idea.)

Hope this helps.