Using the builtin highlighter

This makes Kakoune visually wrap text to fit within the terminal, without actually modifying the content of the buffer (sometimes called "soft wrap").

addhl global/ wrap

See the highlighter documentation for more details about the wrap highlighter.

Automatically break lines at a fixed width

The autowrap script included with Kakoune will automatically insert newline characters as you type. To turn it on, use the autowrap-enable command:

hook global WinSetOption filetype=mail %{
    set window autowrap_column 72
    autowrap-enable
}

Semi-automatically breaking lines at a fixed width

The autowrap script can be a bit quirky, so maybe you only want to rewrap paragraphs after you're finished with them, rather than while you're editing them, in the manner of Vim's = command. Here's a mapping that will do that:

map global normal = '|fmt -w $kak_opt_autowrap_column<ret>'

This mapping pipes the selected text through the fmt command, but you can easily use a different tool like fold or par if you prefer.

Note that this wraps to the value of the autowrap_column option, so you can mix fully-automatic and semi-automatic wrapping and have them be consistent with each other.

See also

• Indentation and Tabulation
• rc/format.kak
• fold command
• fmt command
• par command