So I have been using spf13-vim recently, and I have tried changing the default colorscheme, but for some reason when I do I get strange highlighting of words. The highlighting seems to depend on the filetype such that my .txt and .py file will look different.
As an example, the following image shows the highlighting effect on headnode, clusterRun, bwa, and vt. This only occurs when I alter the colorscheme from default. So is there a way to stop this from happening?
You need to find out which syntax group causes the highlighting. :syn list shows all active groups, but it's easier when you install the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin. When you have the name of the offending syntax group, you can investigate where it comes from; (the last lines of) :scriptnames may help.
If you cannot find the highlighting this way, it may be spell checking; this goes on top of the syntax highlighting. You can list the corresponding highlight groups via
:hi SpellBad | hi SpellCap | hi SpellLocal | hi SpellRare
If you don't want spell checking,
:set nospell
turns it off.
Soap Box
Vim "distributions" like spf-13 and Janus lure you with a quick install and out-of-the-box settings, but you pay the price with increased complexity (you need to understand both Vim's runtime loading scheme and the arbitrary conventions of the distribution) and inflexibility (the distribution may make some things easier, but other things very difficult). Vim is incredibly customizable, using someone else's customization makes no sense.
Related
I have tried well over 15 different colorschemes for vim. I have made all of the correct settings for full color support in terminal. This 'problem' persists in both terminal and gvim. Perhaps it is not a bug and simply the design of the colorschemes themselves, but only one colorscheme I have tried actually has decent highlight support. For example:
In this python class all of the colorschemes will only highlight a couple of things.
wombat only highlights comments and the if.
molokai is extremly dissapointing but at least gets the ints
All of the themes I try are similar to these two except 'Crayon' which compares like so:
Most of the vim color-scheme github pages show previews with highlight support compared to crayon. My question is what might be causing this problem? or is this just the design of the themes themselves?
Syntax highlighting is the combination of two things:
syntax definition, provided by syntax scripts typically found in syntax/ or after/syntax/,
highlighting definition, provided by colorschemes typically found in colors/.
The former defines syntax groups, the latter defines how those groups look.
But those almost never come in pairs so there's no guarantee whatsoever that every possible syntax group is properly handled by every possible colorscheme.
If a colorscheme you like doesn't handle some of the syntax groups you expect it to handle, open an issue or (better) patch it.
I have tried highlighting specific words by adding them in .vimrc, colorscheme file and also in syntax.vim(I changed one at a time, not altogether).
syn match mygroupwords '\c\<\(-word1\|-word2\)'
hi def link mygroupwords colo_words12
hi colo_words12 guifg=red1 gui=bold guibg=white
But somehow it seems to be getting overwritten by default syntax highlighting
i need to highlight keywords irrespective of color-scheme or file-type which have following words-
Ex; -word1 , -word2
Any suggestions?
explanation of your failed attempts
A colorscheme just provides color definitions for predefined highlight groups; that's the wrong place for actual syntax matches! ~/.vimrc is the first configuration that is read; if a filetype is detected and a corresponding syntax script is loaded, that will override your syntax definition.
syntax extensions
If your desired highlightings are extensions to an existing syntax, you can place :syntax match commands in a syntax script in the after directory. For example, to extend Python syntax, put it in ~/.vim/after/syntax/python.vim. That may still fail if the original syntax obscures the match; sometimes, this can be solved via containedin=...
independent marks
If your highlightings are independent of syntax and filetype, there's a different built-in mechanism: :match (and :2match, and additional variants via :call matchadd(...)):
:match mygroupwords /\c\<\(-word1\|-word2\)/
This goes on top of (and is independent of) syntax highlighting. However, it is local to the current window. So, if you put this into your .vimrc, it will only affect the first window (but any files viewed in there). To apply this globally to window splits and tab pages, you have to use :autocmds. It's not trivial to get this totally right. If you need such a full solution, have a look at my Mark plugin; this supports multiple colors, allows presetting with :[N]Mark /{pattern}/ (similar to :match), and highlights in all windows.
I have installed spf13-vim plugin and when I set :color molokai the following orange highlighting occurs;
Does anyone know which setting I need to change to disable the highlighting?
It's not the result of a search, that was my first guess! It doesn't seem confined to any one particular object type either as you can see from the picture.
You need to find out which syntax group causes the highlighting. :syn list shows all active groups, but it's easier when you install the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin. When you have the name of the offending syntax group, you can investigate where it comes from; (the last lines of) :scriptnames may help.
PS: Vim "distributions" like spf-13 and Janus lure you with a quick install and out-of-the-box settings, but you pay the price with increased complexity (you need to understand both Vim's runtime loading scheme and the arbitrary conventions of the distribution) and inflexibility (the distribution may make some things easier, but other things very difficult). Vim is incredibly customizable, using someone else's customization makes no sense.
I have a problem with search highlighting in vim. I have used it before but currently it does not work at all.
I have entered :set hlsearch, which is also in my .vimrc file.
I have entered :set hlsearch? and the result is hlsearch, indicating that I have successfully turned the option on. (right?)
I am running vim and not vi, so that is not the problem.
I have searched around but only found people asking about turning OFF search highlighting.
I would appreciate any input as this has been driving me nuts. Thanks!
Edit: highlighting also doesn't work for spellcheck, so evidently it's something global about highlighting.
When you have problems with multiple highlightings (like search and spell in your case), first check the defined highlightings with
:hi
If any groups are wrong or off, check your :colorscheme, and maybe try another.
In the console, color problems are often related to the number of available colors, a hairy problem. Check with
:set t_Co?
Another good tool for checking problems with individual syntax items is the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin.
I'm using Vim in a terminal on my MacBook Air with OS X Lion, and I can't seem to find a good plugin for Markdown syntax highlighting.
So far I've tried the plasticboy plugin and Tim Pope's plugin. The plasticboy plugin worked OK but was causing white space at the end of lines to be highlighted, and I haven't figured out how to turn that off. (It's really annoying, because every time I hit space when I'm writing it highlights the character.)
Tim's plugin didn't seem to do very much in the way of highlighting, other than maybe headers that use ###. Code blocks and bullets are ignored. I might be missing something there. I do use the .md extension on my Markdown files, so it should be picking up the filetype.
I've also seen a reference to Vim 7.3 having Markdown support built in, but without one of those two plugins I don't get any highlighting at all.
Do either of these require specific color schemes to work?
About the native syntax highlight for markdown I think it only works for files with the extension .markdown by default.
I was having problems with markdown syntax highlight for my .md files.
I tried:
:set syntax=markdown
And it worked.
So i included the following line in my .vimrc:
au BufNewFile,BufFilePre,BufRead *.md set filetype=markdown
Now my vim have syntax highlight for my .md files.
BufFilePre is needed for :sav
Native syntax highlighting
Native syntax highlighting for Markdown only works by default for the .markdown file extension.
The following line in .vimrc yields the best results for both vim and gvim:
autocmd BufNewFile,BufFilePre,BufRead *.md set filetype=markdown.pandoc
Explanation:
1. Specify your Markdown flavour!
If you work with mainly one flavour of Markdown (e.g. Pandoc), be sure to mention this as well! Doing so, allows for mixing and matching of both Markdown- and Pandoc-specific Vim plug-ins. For example: I have found the vim-pandoc-syntax plug-in particularly suitable for my highlighting needs. Nevertheless, I use the more general vim-markdown-folding for Markdown folding.
By the way, only one flavour is allowed, separated by a dot, e.g.: filetype=markdown.pandoc
2. gvim requires BufFilePre
gvim requires an additional BufFilePre in the autocommand line for Markdown file type recognition with the Save As… :sav command.
This should work to disable the end-of-line space highlighting when using the plasticboy mkd plugin:
:syn clear mkdLineBreak
You could autocmd that for the necessary file extensions so that you needn't do it every time you load a markdown file.
Note that this specific highlight exists because Markdown treats lines ending with 2 or more space characters specially by inserting a <br>, so it is useful.
The plasticboy plugin uses TODO highlighting for this rule, which is a bit too much as it's designed to, by default, be really garish - yellow background - so that it stands out. You can make this less visually striking by changing that highlight rule. One quick way to do this would be something like:
:hi link mkdLineBreak Underlined
Now those end-of-line spaces will show up as underlined. Try linking to other highlight groups for something that may appeal to you more. Instead of using link you can get even more specific about those end-of-line spaces: for instance you could specify that they show up as just slightly lighter/darker than the normal background, using your own highlight command, specifying custom ctermfg, ctermbg, guifg, guibg settings.
As above, you could autocmd this to apply your specific settings.
For more information about link highlight groups, type: :help group-name and you'll see a list of groups that can be linked that themselves should helpfully be displayed using their current highlight rules. Also: :help highlight.
In Tim's plugin the .md extension works only for README.md because filetype.vim specifies so.
" Markdown
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.markdown,*.mdown,*.mkd,*.mkdn,README.md setf markdown
If you don't like putting all of your configuration in ~/.vimrc, you can create ~/.vim/ftdetect/markdown.md (or its equivalent on Windows) with the following contents.
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.md setf markdown