How to automatically disable hardwraps when making a list in vim?

Question

For people who use hardwrapping in vim via:

set tw=80
set fo=ta
# Or similiar

As you write/edit paragraphs of text it will add hardwraps as intended. However, by default the above settings are not very clever when one is trying to edit lists, e.g.:

- item 1
- item 2
- item 3

As soon as you edit any item on the list vim will join the three lines together to form one single paragraph. Was wondering if vim could be configured so it can intelligently disable / enable hardwrap.

Answer 1

As far as I know, it isn't possible to adjust whether wrapping is enabled on a line-by-line basis. However, if you're comfortable with having your lists be wrapped on subsequent lines, you can set the following:

set autoindent
set formatoptions+=n
set formatlistpat=^[-*+?]\+\s\+

That will result in long item lines looking like this:

- This is one single, very, extremely long
  item.
- This is the second item.

That will also have the same effect if you use the gq motion to format. In both cases, Vim won't wrap the list items together.