Neovim plugin to send text from a buffer to a terminal

This plugin aims to be simpler in design and easier to use than other similar plugins like neoterm, vimcmdline, vim-slime, repl.nvim and iron.nvim. It does not care for filetype-to-REPL mappings and starting your REPL. Instead, you go to an existing terminal that is running your REPL and type :SendHere.

After that you can use the s operator from any buffer to send text to the terminal. The behaviour of the s operator closely matches vim's built-in y or d operators. It works line-wise (ss, 3ss), with visual selection (vjs, Vjjs) and with motions/text-objects (sj, sip).

Multiline quirks

For multiline text, some REPLs (e.g. IPython) only receive the first line. For them, try :SendHere ipy in the terminal. You can add support for the REPLs' multiline quirks in your init.vim with:

let g:send_multiline = {
\    'repl1': {'begin':..., 'end':..., 'newline':...},
\    'repl2': {'begin':..., 'end':..., 'newline':...},
\    ...
\}

Then use them as: :SendHere repl1. If the REPL supports bracketed paste, usually, something like {'begin':"\e[200~", 'end':"\e[201~\n", 'newline':"\n"} should work.

Provided commands, functions, operators

Name	Description
:SendHere	Set current terminal as send target with default multiline settings
:SendHere <repl>	Set current terminal as send target with multiline settings for repl
[count]ss	Send count lines and move cursor to last line.
<visual>s	Send visual selection.
s<motion>	Send motion or text object (like y/d for yank/delete).
S	Send from current column till end of line (like D)
g:send_multiline	Add multiline settings for your favourite REPL here.
g:send_disable_mapping	Disable s, S, ss mappings
<Plug>Send, <Plug>SendLine	Use these to define your own mappings as shown below

The default mappings are defined as follows. You can define your own mappings by following these.

nmap ss <Plug>SendLine
nmap s <Plug>Send
vmap s <Plug>Send
nmap S s$

Other plugins

This plugin works nicely with vim-pythonsense. For example, you can do saf and sac to send functions and classes from your code buffer to the Python REPL.

Extensions for other targets

This plugin is extensible: you can define other types of targets to send text to as follows:

1. Define a vim function: function SendToTarget(lines) .... lines is a list of strings that hold the text to be sent.
2. Save the function to the send_target variable: let g:send_target = {'send': function('SendToTarget')}
3. Optional: add other fields to g:send_target that are relevant to your function.

Sending to Jupyter kernels

Using the extension feature described above, I have implemented a extension (included with the plugin) to send code directly to Jupyter kernels running in notebook, lab, qtconsole or console. You have to install the Neovim Python client and Jupyter client in Neovim's python host with:

pip install pynvim jupyter_client
# or, if you're using conda
conda install -c conda-forge pynvim jupyter_client

Then, you start a kernel in any of the Jupyter applications and run :SendTo <kernel-pid.json>. This is useful for sending code to QtConsole and using its rich display of images, inline plots, etc. You need to enable QtConsole's display of remote commands in its config file (usually ~/.jupyter/jupyter_qtconsole_config.py):

c.ConsoleWidget.include_other_output = True
c.ConsoleWidget.other_output_prefix = ''

For Jupyter Console, add to ~/.jupyter/jupyter_console_config.py:

c.ZMQTerminalInteractiveShell.include_other_output = True
c.ZMQTerminalInteractiveShell.other_output_prefix = ''

Without these config settings, the kernels receive and execute the code, but do not display the code or the results.

Autocomplete with Jupyter kernels

When a connection to a Jupyter kernel is established, you can use the kernel's autocomplete feature in the editor. At the bare minimum, you would do:

:SendTo <kernel-pid.json>
:setlocal omnifunc=SendComplete

Type Ctrl-x Ctrl-o to see the autocomplete suggestions. You can integrate it with other vim autocomplete plugins that work with user-defined completions or omnicompletion.

Provided commands, functions

Name	Documentation
:SendTo, :SendTo <kernel-pid.json>	Send to existing Jupyter kernel. Run %connect_info in the Python session to get value of kernel-pid.json. By default, connect to latest started kernel.
SendComplete()	Completion function to be used as omnifunc or completefunc
SendCanComplete(line)	Completion is available for line

To do

1. Allow buffers/windows to have different target terminals.
2. Add motions for IPython-style cell-blocks e.g. send all code between two comments.