I've always wanted a CodeBubbles like environment for Vim.

Vim doesn't have buffers that are projections of other buffers. I wonder how hard that would be to implement in VimL. e.g. a buffer which is just one function from a file, focused.

that doesn't sound too terribly complicated you can make read-only buffers in vim, and erase them + write to them using vimscript you could use vim's job control to start a job that reads a file, calls a vimscript function to modify the contents (a string), erases the buffer contents, and writes your new contents

then somehow call the job in a loop

maybe jobs can dispatch other jobs... if so, that ought to do the trick

I suspect the right way to do it is to have the full file in a (possibly hidden) buffer, and just sync the "focus" buffer to the real buffer on changes.

Although, the modified status of the focus buffer should appear the same as the other buffer, too.

Hmm.

I know emacs has this. I wonder what they call it?

that sounds good too. off-hand, i know that calling :e with a buffer focused refreshes its contents

there is also some setting that does that for you automatically, but you can't expect every user to have that in his/her vimrc

Neovim wants to offer this via the change API, it's one of the motivations

You know, I tried to find where Neovim developers discuss things and failed. Is it on IRC?

The mailing list is dead dead dead

I think the node plugin stuff is better as of last week, I'm going to look at upgrading refactor.

I use gitter for talking to neovim devs

In emacs they call it narrowing. There are some narrow region plugins for Vim.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Narrowing.html

@tylerw ty!