How can I make scroll lock work in Vim (windowed and terminal versions)?
When scroll lock is activated, using the arrow keys on the keyboard should scroll the window instead of moving the pointer.
When scroll lock is deactivated, the pointer should be moving as normally.
I think the best way to do what you want is to use ctrle to scroll up and ctrly to scroll down as the doc says:
However if you really want to use the arrow keys and have a scroll lock mechanism you could implement it yourself by adding this to your vimrc:
" This variable will hold the state of the scroll lock " 0: disabled 1: endabled let g:scrollLock = 0 " This command toggles the state of the scroll lock command! ToggleScrollLock let g:scrollLock = !g:scrollLock " If you want to avoid typing the previous command each time you can use a mapping like this one (Replace <F1> by your preferred key) nnoremap <silent> <F1> :ToggleScrollLock<CR> " And these are conditional mappings depending on the value of g:scrollLock the arrow keys will behave differently nnoremap <expr> <Up> (g:scrollLock == 1) ? '<C-y>' : '<up>' nnoremap <expr> <Down> (g:scrollLock == 1) ? '<C-e>' : '<down>' See :h :map-<expr> for more details about the last mappings.
Also I would encourage you to read :h scrolling there is a lot of different ways to scroll through a buffer in Vim, knowing all of your options might help you understanding why Vim doesn't have a traditional scroll lock mechanism.
Use the scrolloff setting and set it to a value larger than half the window height I think you'll get the behavior you really want.
:set scrolloff=999 In this mode both normal navigation keys (j, k) as well as the arrow keys will cause the text to scroll while the cursor line stays in the middle of the view.
ctrl+eandctrl+y:h CTRL-E:h CTRL-Yso I'd say no need for a scroll lock button.