Inspired by this post. . .
Vim and plaintext data files: http://briancarper.net/blog/552/
. . . this plugin sets Vim's listchars for files ending in .tsv (tab separated values) and turns off wrap, such that a file might look like this:
Name»-------------Language»---------Current Release»--Last Updated»----…
Jekyll»-----------Ruby»-------------0.11.2»-----------2011-12-27»------…
Hyde»-------------Python»-----------0.4»--------------2009-10-06»------…
ikiwiki»----------Perl»-------------3.20120629»-------2012-06-29»------…
If the columns are too wide (or too narrow) for the data you're viewing, you can change the tabstop with set tabstop = 14, for example.
At launch, you can also adjust the tabstop with something like this:
vim "+set tabstop=30" data.tsv