A Vim/NeoVim plugin for TidalCycles, the language for live coding musical patterns written in Haskell.
This plugin by default uses tmux, a known and loved terminal multiplexer, for communicating with between Vim and the Tidal interpreter. It was originally based on vim-slime.
New: If you are using NeoVim, you can now use the Terminal instead of tmux. Read the Configuration section on how to enable it.
-
Start livecoding with Vim by simply running:
$ tidalvim
This creates a tmux session with Vim and Tidal running on different panes.
-
Write something like this:
d1 $ sound "bd sn"
-
While being on that line, press
<c-e>
(Control + E) to evaluate it.You should see Vim flash that line for a second and a chunk of text appear on your Tidal interpreter. If you already have SuperDirt or other synth running, you should hear a kick and a snare :)
Make sure you have TidalCycles installed, with SuperDirt running. See the Tidal wiki for more information.
You can install it from the main repos:
$ sudo apt-get install tmux
$ brew install tmux
There seems to be a Cygwin package for tmux, but I haven't tested this plugin on Windows anyway, so you are on your own here.
If you happen to make it work, let me know so I can update this section!
I recommend using a Vim plugin manager like
Plug. Check the link for instructions
on installing and configuring. If you don't want a plugin manager, you can
also download the latest release
here and extract the
contents on your Vim directory (usually ~/.vim/
).
For example, with Plug you need to:
- Edit your
.vimrc
file and add these lines:
Plug 'tidalcycles/vim-tidal'
- Restart Vim and execute
:PlugInstall
to automatically download and install the plugins.
Finally, go to the plugin repository and run make install
:
$ cd ~/.vim/plugged/vim-tidal
$ sudo make install
This creates symlinks on /usr/local/bin
for tidal
and tidalvim
scripts.
You can remove them later if you want with make uninstall
.
Make sure to have the filetype plugin on
setting on your .vimrc, otherwise
plugin won't be loaded when opening a .tidal file.
Tidal 1.0 introduces some breaking changes, so if haven't upgraded yet, you can
still use this plugin with an older version. Just point your Plug entry to use
the tidal-0.9
branch.
First change your Plug line on your .vimrc
to:
Plug 'tidalcycles/vim-tidal', {'branch': 'tidal-0.9'}
Then on Vim run :PlugInstall
to update your plugin.
This plugin comes bundled with two Bash scripts: tidalvim
and tidal
.
tidalvim
starts a tmux session with the screen horizontally splitted, having
Vim on the upper pane and the Tidal interpreter on the lower pane. This is the
simplest way to start using Tidal with Vim.
You don't have to use tidalvim
necessarily. If you have a more complex setup
or just want to use Vim outside of tmux, you can use tidal
. See below.
tidal
fires up GHCi (the Glasgow Haskell interpreter) and runs a bootstrap
file that loads Tidal up. tidalvim
uses this script to start the Tidal
interpreter on the lower pane. You can even use it standalone (without Vim) by
simply running tidal
from your shell.
$ tidal
GHCi, version 7.10.3: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ :? for help
tidal> d1 $ sound "bd sn"
tidal> :t density 2 $ n "0 1"
density 2 $ n "0 1" :: Pattern ParamMap
So, in case you don't want to use tidalvim
, just run the following on another
terminal:
tmux new-session -s tidal tidal
What tidal
does is actually run ghci
with the argument -ghci-script Tidal.ghci
. Tidal.ghci is found at the root of the repository,
and is responsible for bootstraping Tidal. See Configure section for more on
how to customize Tidal bootstraping process. Any extra arguments when running
tidal
will be delegated to ghci
.
These are some of the commands that can be run from Vim command line:
-
:<range>TidalSend
: Send a[range]
of lines. If no range is provided the current line is sent. -
:TidalSend1 {text}
: Send a single line of text specified on the command line. -
:TidalConfig
: Configure tmux socket name and target pane -
:TidalSilence [num]
: Silence stream number[num]
by sendingd[num] silence
. -
:TidalPlay [num]
: Send first ocurrence of stream number[num
] from the current cursor position. -
:TidalHush
: Silences all streams by sendinghush
. -
:TidalGenerateCompletions {path}
: Generate dictionary for Dirt-Samples completion (path is optional)
Using one of these key bindings you can send lines to Tidal:
<c-e>
(Control+E),<localleader>ss
: Send current inner paragraph.<localleader>s
: Send current line or current visually selected block.
<c-e>
can be called on either Normal, Visual, Select or Insert mode, so it is
probably easier to type than <localleader>ss
or <localleader>s
.
There are other bindings to control Tidal like:
<localleader>s[num]
: Call:TidalPlay [num]
<localleader>[num]
: Call:TidalSilence [num]
<localleader>h
,<c-h>
: Call:TidalHush
The <leader>
key is a special key used to perform commands with a sequence of
keys. The <localleader>
key behaves as the <leader>
key, but is local to
a buffer. In particular, the above bindings only work in buffers with the
"tidal" file type set, e.g. files whose file type is .tidal
By default, there is no <localleader>
set. To define one, e.g. for use with
a comma (,
), write this on your .vimrc
file:
let maplocalleader=","
Reload your configuration (or restart Vim), and after typing ,ss
on a few
lines of code, you should see those being copied onto the Tidal interpreter on
the lower pane.
By default, there are two normal keybindings and one for visual blocks using
your <localleader>
key. If you don't have one defined, set it on your
.vimrc
script with let maplocalleader=","
, for example.
If you don't like some of the bindings or want to change them, add this line to disable them:
let g:tidal_no_mappings = 1
See section Mappings on ftplugin/tidal.vim and copy the
bindings you like to your .vimrc
file and modify them.
You can configure tmux socket name and target pane by typing <localleader>c
or :TidalConfig
. This will prompt you first for the socket name, then for
the target pane.
About the target pane:
":"
means current window, current pane (a reasonable default)":i"
means the ith window, current pane":i.j"
means the ith window, jth pane"h:i.j"
means the tmux session where h is the session identifier (either session name or number), the ith window and the jth pane
When you exit Vim you will lose that configuration. To make this permanent, set
g:tidal_default_config
on your .vimrc
. For example, suppose you want to run
Tidal on a tmux session named omg
, and the GHCi interpreter will be running
on the window 1 and pane 0. In that case you would need to add this line:
let g:tidal_default_config = {"socket_name": "default", "target_pane": "omg:1.0"}
If you are using NeoVim, you can ditch tmux and use the terminal. Add the following line on your configuration file:
let g:tidal_target = "terminal"
Quick overview of the terminal:
- The terminal defaults to insert mode.
- Enter terminal insert mode using eg.
i
. - Exit terminal insert mode with
<C-\><C-n>
. - You'll probably want to apply the
<A-k>
mappings mentioned in:help terminal
.
When sending a paragraph or a single line, vim-tidal will "flash" the selection
for some milliseconds. By default duration is set to 150ms, but you can modify
it by setting the g:tidal_flash_duration
variable.
For customizing the startup script for defining helper functions, see below.
tidalvim
is just an example script. You can copy and customize it as much
as you want. See man tmux
if you want to know more about its options.
For example, if you want to split horizontally instead of vertically, change
the -v
for -h
option in the split-window
line:
- split-window -v -t $SESSION \; \
+ split-window -h -t $SESSION \; \
Both scripts have some options that you can specify as environment variables. For example:
TIDAL_TEMPO_IP=192.168.0.15 SESSION=whatever tidalvim
This would start Tidal synced to another Tidal on 192.168.0.15, and it would
try to attach or create a tmux sesssion called whatever
.
The following is a list of all variables that can be changed:
-
FILE
: File name to open with Vim (default:$(date +%F).tidal
, e.g.2017-03-09.tidal
). The.tidal
extension is important (you can run:setfiletype haskell.tidal
in case you won't use a .tidal file here). -
SESSION
: tmux session name (default:tidal
) -
TIDAL_BOOT_PATH
: Tidal Bootstrap file, a .ghci file (default:Tidal.ghci
) -
TIDAL_TEMPO_IP
: Tells Tidal to sync tempo with another Tidal instance on the specified IP (default:127.0.0.1
, i.e. use local) -
VIM
: Vim command (default:vim
) -
GHCI
: GHCi command (default:ghci
) -
TMUX
: tmux command (default:tmux
)
In case you have defined some helper functions, and/or you want to import other
modules into Tidal, you can edit the Tidal.ghci
found at the root of the
repository.
However doing this could eventually cause conflicts when trying to upgrade
vim-tidal, so instead I recommend that you define a different .ghci
file that
first loads Tidal.ghci
and includes all your custom definitions.
Here is an example. Suppose you define a myStuff.ghci
file on your home
directory like this:
--file: ~/myStuff.ghci
-- Bootstrap Tidal
-- Replace this path if you have vim-tidal installed elsewhere
:script ~/.vim/bundle/vim-tidal/Tidal.ghci
:{
let foo = every 4 $ within (0.75, 1) (density 4)
bar = n "<0 1 2 4>"
:}
Then, you would run tidal
or tidalvim
with TIDAL_BOOT_PATH
pointing to
your new script file:
TIDAL_BOOT_PATH=~/myStuff.ghci tidalvim
Please note that this a .ghci
script, not a Haskell module. So multiline
definitions need to be wrapped around :{
and :}
, as shown in the example
above.
Here is a list of common problems.
I press
<c-e>
but it moves the screen down by one line, and nothing else happens
Usually <c-e>
is used to move the screen forward by one line, but vim-tidal remaps
this to sending current paragraph. If this is happening you either:
- Opened a file without
.tidal
extension, or changed file type accidentally. Solution: Reopen Vim or set filetype for current buffer with:set ft=tidal
. - Have
g:tidal_no_mappings
setting on your.vimrc
. This disables all mappings. Solution: Remove<c-e>
binding, or rebind to something else.
It could also be that you do not have filetype plugin on
setting in your
.vimrc. Make sure you have that setting defined.
I press
<c-e>
and nothing else happens
This means that vim-tidal is sending text to tmux, but to the wrong session/window/pane. Solution: Check that you have configure the socket name and target pane correctly. See the Configure section above for more information.
If you have any question or something does not work as expected, there are many channels you can go to:
- Chat: Reach out at the
#tidal
and#vim
channels - GitHub issues
- Official Tidal forum
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/tidalcycles/vim-tidal. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.
Refer to the LICENSE file