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In conjunction with https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3131393/remapping-help-in-vim-to-open-in-a-new-tab , I'm looking to also make the shift-K shortcut that opens help in a new tab.

I first tried nmap <S-K> :tab help expand("<cword>")<CR>, but it doesn't actually work - the expand is apparently taken literally as the help tag text, and is not executed.

So, how do I remap <S-K> to get help on the current word in a new tab in Vim?

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Sundar R
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  • I was going to recommend asking over at [Vi and Vim.SE](http://vi.stackexchange.com), but is there a reason you asked here instead? – bertieb Aug 23 '15 at 10:09
  • @bertieb No specific reason except the assumption that, with a larger userbase, there might be more probability of getting an answer here. It has turned out my question contained two parts, so I'll now take the unanswered part over to [vi.se] and try it out there. – Sundar R Aug 24 '15 at 08:28
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    I saw you were aware of them so figured it would be something along those lines, cheers :) – bertieb Aug 24 '15 at 09:04

2 Answers2

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I'm not sure what you're trying to do. <s-k>, also known as K, opens the man page for the keyword under the cursor. I assume you want to create a mapping to open the vim help page for the keyword under the cursor. This can be done by this (i'll use <c-k> to not override K):

noremap <c-k> :execute "tab h " . expand("<cword>")<cr>
madmax1
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    ", also known as K, opens the man page" <- This is actually incorrect: it opens whatever the current `keywordprg` program is, depending on the filetype; its default is `man`, but the `keywordprg` automatically changes to `:help` when in a vimscript file, and can be set to for eg. `perldoc -f` for filetype perl, to automatically get perldoc help within Perl files when `K` is pressed. – Sundar R Aug 24 '15 at 08:23
  • What I wanted was a way to take this whole thing and just add the feature of opening the output in a new tab. Your `execute` idea did help me make this work just for vim keywords at least, so I'll accept your answer and split the question about making this portable for any value of `keywordprg` a separate question (since that looks to be a more complicated requirement). – Sundar R Aug 24 '15 at 08:25
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    I see what you are trying to do. You can achieve this with this mapping (i'll use again): `nnoremap :execute 'tabnew read !' . &keywordprg . ' ' . expand("")` – madmax1 Aug 24 '15 at 08:36
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For the sake of anyone stumbling upon this later: I combined the two methods mentioned in @madmax1's answer and comment, to make Vim choose the appropriate method of help automatically depending on the filetype.

function! GetHelpOnCwordInTab()
    if &filetype == "vim"
        execute 'tab help ' . expand("<cword>")
    else
        execute 'tabnew <bar> read ! ' . &keywordprg . expand("<cword>")
    endif 
endfunction
autocmd FileType * nnoremap <C-K> :call GetHelpOnCwordInTab()<CR>

(I had to take @madmax1's suggestion on keymapping too (C-K instead of S-K) because Scriptease has an autocmd overwriting the S-K mapping, and I'm not sure how to override that from within .vimrc.)

Sundar R
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