How to get the Help window to always open in the same position?

Question

I do this for opening help pages in vertical window:

cabbrev help vert botright help

this way, it is ok, but a bit disturbing, and it is spamming my :history a bit too. I would like to get Vim to not expand this, just run the command. So when I write :help topic I want it to not expanded, but to run the command :vert botright help topic I tried with

cabbrev <silent> help vert botright help

but it doesn't work.

Is it possible to do at all?

Answer 1

I found the perfect solution based on this e-mail: http://vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com/Horizontal-layout-by-default-td1164876.html#a1164886
So if you want help windows on the right, do this:

autocmd FileType help :wincmd H

this puts the 'help' type windows immediately to the right just like CTRL-W H. See :h CTRL-W_H in vim.
The small problem with it if you have the hidden option enabled, just closing the window with :q doesn't unload the help window buffer, and if you want to open it again, it will not trigger the FileType event for some reason (why?), so if you use :set hidden you need to:

autocmd FileType help set bufhidden=unload

to get help windows unload, which is the default behavior anyway.

Answer 2

It will only expand after you press another key (e.g. Space)

Perhaps you can make it

cabbrev <silent> he vert botright help

And then make it a habit to quickly say :heSpaceEnter or indeed

:he topic

Which will then expand to the full command

Edit

If you don't want the expansion at all, I suggest a custom command:

:command! Help vert botright help

Answer 3

Although your answer works to see two help topics on the same window (e.g.: :h bar | h foo), it is not optimal to see two entries on different windows (e.g.: h foo | sp | wincmd w | h bar), as it executes also executes the wincmd on the second window thus leaving three vertical windows, even if your monitor can display only two 80 columns windows.

Adding the following lines to ~/.vim/ftplugin/help.vim executes the wincmd only when there is room for another vertical split.

" Only do this when not done yet for this buffer
if exists("b:did_ftplugin")
   finish
endif

if min(map(range(winnr('$')), 'winwidth(v:val)')) > 160
   wincmd L
endif