Working with vim on multiple monitors

Question

I have three monitors.

I normally run one maximized xterm on each monitor, attached to the same GNU screen session.

Can a similar model be used for vim? Is it possible to have three vims running, all sharing the same "vim session":

• Each vim window showing a different vim tab
• vim settings shared between all windows
• Not getting the "Swap file ... already exists!" error message if I open the same file on two tabs.

Answer 1

I have a working solution where two vim instances communicate.

http://github.com/codeape2/vim-multiple-monitors

It uses the SwapExists autocmd to instruct the other instance to open a file if an existing swap file is detected.

Answer 2

You can use vim under screen.

$ screen $ vim  # on another terminal  $ screen -x # the same vim screen 

If your terminal emulator supports tabbing (e.g. gnome-terminal), you can use it as a tabbing (IMHO, gnome-terminals' tabbing support is better than vim's own, except perhaps you can't copy and paste among different vim sessions, however you can instead use the system copy-paste buffer: "+y and "+p).

This does not work if you're using gvim though.