BTW, I see you want vertical splits by default, just like me. Some of us on the vim list have been working on a new option called splitvertical that would open splits vertically by default (You'd use :horizontal to override). I'd love to have you try out the patch and send bug reports (it's been my production editor for a few weeks).

https://groups.google.com/group/vim_dev/msg/679fee5026967b82

Real question: why is this really necessary? Creating a vertical split quickly is something I do often, all day, with ctrl-w v.

Because plugins usually open split buffers that are horizontal by default.

There's a bunch of different commands in vim that open new split windows. :help, :diffsplit, C-], and so on. I'd rather specify my split policy once rather than remember to type :vert or C-w v everytime. (I only found out about C-w v and C-w s after reading OP, so that exacerbated the problem.)

Imagine new plugins that split windows to open tree explorers or previews or whatnot. I'd like splits they create to automatically adopt my policy.

Thanks a lot Steve, this will definitely come in handy.

Quick question - It looks like this requires python support for vim. What would happen if I didn't have python compiled in, and then tried to use this plugin?

(You can check for yourself with :version)

Everything explodes. It's on my list of things to fix: http://bitbucket.org/sjl/gundo.vim/issue/6/errors-on-startup...