I have the following in my .vimrc file:
version 6.0
" set highlight mode
set highlight=8b,#-,db,es,lb,mb,M-,nu,rs,sr,tb,vr,ws
Which was largely borrowed from here.
I don't understand what this line does:
set highlight=8b,#-,db,es,lb,mb,M-,nu,rs,sr,tb,vr,ws
I spent a few hours trying to figure out why my line numbers were not conforming to my colorscheme, and have traced it back to this line. If I remove the nu from the list, my line numbers start highlighting correctly. I can't find any documentation explaining what any of those two-character patterns mean. Changing or removing the other ones does not seem to affect anything obvious.
Can someone please point me to some documentation that explains what's going on here?
Edit: I read the :help highlight page in Vim, and could not find anything explaining this syntax. If it exists in help, could someone please tell me how to find the relevant section?
As was in the comments, :help 'highlight' has your answers.
Each argument is a pair of type-mode parameters.
The meaning of each of the pairs you listed is:
8b special characters for :map (eg <cr>) are bold
#- ~ characters after eof, along with some other special symbols, are not formatted
db directories are bold
es errors are standout
lb last search results are bold
mb more-prompt (when messages take up more than the screen) is bold
M- current mode (eg insert) is not formatted
nu line number is underlined
rs enter and y/n prompts are standout
sr status line of current window is reverse
tb titles of options (eg from :set all) are bold
vr visual highlighting is reverse
ws warnings are standout
If you wanted to customise these options, here's the meaning of each possible value for the mode parameter (second character):
r reverse
i italic
b bold
s standout
u underline
c undercurl
n no highlighting
- no highlighting
: use a highlight group
I won't go into detail for all the possible type parameters (first character), but you can find them in the previously mentioned help page.
Related
When defining a :sign you can use the linehl argument to assign a highlight group for the whole line the sign is placed in.
This highlights the whole line until the end, but how I do to highlight only the text of that line?
Edit: The idea is to use Syntastic to show the errors and warnings, but I can't redefine the SyntasticStyleError sign to do what I want. It highlights all the line instead of only the text of that line.
It is not possible as far as I know. Look at the :h sign-define:
:sign define {name} {argument}...
Define a new sign or set attributes for an existing sign.
The {name} can either be a number (all digits) or a name
starting with a non-digit. Leading digits are ignored, thus
"0012", "012" and "12" are considered the same name.
About 120 different signs can be defined.
Accepted arguments:
icon={bitmap}
Define the file name where the bitmap can be found. Should be
a full path. The bitmap should fit in the place of two
characters. This is not checked. If the bitmap is too big it
will cause redraw problems. Only GTK 2 can scale the bitmap
to fit the space available.
toolkit supports ~
GTK 1 pixmap (.xpm)
GTK 2 many
Motif pixmap (.xpm)
Win32 .bmp, .ico, .cur
pixmap (.xpm) |+xpm_w32|
linehl={group}
Highlighting group used for the whole line the sign is placed
in. Most useful is defining a background color.
text={text} *E239*
Define the text that is displayed when there is no icon or the
GUI is not being used. Only printable characters are allowed
and they must occupy one or two display cells.
texthl={group}
Highlighting group used for the text item.
It does not offer you a straight-forward way to distinguish between the text background colour and the background colour of the line - in fact, you can only set the linehl parameter.
Maybe there is a hacky way to do what you want. I've stumbled upon this link you might find useful: https://sunaku.github.io/vim-256color-bce.html
Another interesting idea is explained on vim.wikia.com (link) in the Highlighting that stays after cursor moves section. It suggests using the following command:
:nnoremap <silent> <Leader>l ml:execute 'match Search /\%'.line('.').'l/'<CR>
This way you might mix it with the information you get from :sign place and replace signs with your custom highlighting method I posted above. It requires some scripting though.
I'm writing a custom syntax highlighting file for a proprietary language I have to use a lot. I have written a full file but it seems to only use 3 colors. All punctuation is one color, some of the keywords I have specified are another color, and everything else is a third color.
The odd thing is, I removed every match and every redefinition (hi def link) from the file and the highlighting doesn't seem to have changed at all. In fact, I tried adding some other keyword mappings to try to see where it's breaking, but it seems only certain lines are being evaluated for the highlighting. For instance, this line ends up highlighting the proper text:
syn keyword clangImport IMPORT
However, this line (below) doesn't and is a different color despite not even providing any specific highlighting instructions:
syn keyword clangGroupAttributes ?? GN GA GV GL GP GR PV PN SI CN
Why would it only evaluate certain lines of the syn keyword mapping?
Additionally, none of my regex matching worked at all despite using something as simple as "\d\+".
I am making changes to an existing C code. If I just want to check my changes, I can easily use vimdiff for that, with old & modified files.
What I want is to limit some syntax highlighting to just the diff part.
Particularly I need to highlight TABS, but only those TABS contained within DiffAdd & DiffChange sections/regions.
What I tried:
syntax region TESTRGN start="TESTRGN_START" end="TESTRGN_END"
highlight TESTRGN ctermbg=lightgreen guibg=lightgreen
syntax match LeadingTabsInRegion display contained containedin=TESTRGN /^\( *\t\+\)\+/
highlight LeadingTabsInRegion ctermbg=darkred guibg=darkred
Above snippet highlights the leading TABS within TESTRGN & tabs in remaining file remain un-highlighted.
However, if I change TESTRGN to DiffAdd in the syntax match line, it does not work as I expected.
My understanding is that DiffAdd is not a region defined using syntax region ... & hence containedin=DiffAdd does not work.
So is there any method/work-around for doing what I am trying to do?
First, what's so bad about having the highlighting everywhere? The diff highlighting stands out well and therefore provides visible scope; couldn't you just ignore the highlighting elsewhere?
In Vim, syntax groups are defined and then linked to colors and attributes defined in highlight groups. The diff stuff uses the second part of that mechanism, but not the syntax part. Therefore, you unfortunately cannot refer to the diff regions within :syntax commands.
There's only a very ugly workaround for this: You have to determine the line numbers that have diff highlighting (via repeatedly stepping through the changes with the ]c motion, and/or using synID() to check for diff highlighting). With those line numbers, you can then define :syntax match commands with the special \%l atom that only matches certain lines. Of course, any addition / deletion of lines would invalidate your definitions, which would need to be frequently re-synchronized (triggered by :autocmd). That's a lot of effort vs. just ignoring the highlighting elsewhere.
Though you need to reset whenever the line was changed, this is just a tip for one of line number based ideas, you can get a list of all diff highlighted lines with:
let dl = filter(range(1, line('$')),
\'index([hlID("DiffChange"), hlID("DiffText"), hlID("DiffAdd")],
\diff_hlID(v:val, 1)) != -1')
And using this, it might be possible to set your TESTRGN with:
exec "syntax match TESTRGN /\\(" . join(map(dl, '"\\%" . v:val . "l"'), "\\|") . "\\).*/"
I may have a unique situation here. I want gVim (gui version, in Linux) to keep concealed characters concealed no matter what, even when the cursor is on that line or that character gets selected. (It should be as close to if the characters never existed as possible.) Currently the concealed characters show themselves when the cursor enters that line, which causes text to jump around when scrolling and when selecting text.
We are using gView (read-only gVim) to view logs, so as to take advantage of its robust syntax highlighting. Problem is, these logs contain lots of escape characters and TTY color codes, that make reading difficult. (^[33mSomeText^[0m)
I'm using this line to hide them:
syntax match Ignore /\%o33\[[0-9]\{0,5}m/ conceal
Since the files are viewed by non-vim-experts, it looks glitchy and broken when the text un-conceals itself. (And also looks glitchy and broken if the color codes are present, and also looks glitchy and broken if the color codes are blacked-out to become invisible, but still show when selected and appear after copy/paste.)
This should be fine because these files are opened read-only in gview, with an extra set nomodifiable making it even more difficult to save the file. While it's possible to edit and attempt to save the logs, doing so is considered both an invalid thing to do, and a harmless thing to do, and requires enough Vim skills that if someone manages to edit a file they know what they're doing. The problem with being able to edit a line with concealed text does not apply.
If 'conceal' can't be configured to keep hidden text hidden no matter what, an acceptable alternative would be to replace the TTY color codes with whitespace when the file gets opened. But, this has to be done in read-only mode, and we can't have gview throwing up a save dialog on closing the window because the file has been modified by its .vimrc.
Note: I am in full control of the .vim script file sourced when these are read, but cannot control the existence of the TTY color codes or the code that opens the log files in gview. (i.e. I can't pass it through sed or anything like that.) The ideal solution is anything that can transparently nuke the color codes from within a .vimrc, but I'll hear any suggestions. The 'conceal' feature is just my most promising lead.
So, any ideas how to permanently get rid of these on file view without dialogs popping up on close?
:help conceal
When the "conceal" argument is given, the item is marked as concealable.
Whether or not it is actually concealed depends on the value of the
'conceallevel' option. The 'concealcursor' option is used to decide whether
concealable items in the current line are displayed unconcealed to be able to
edit the line.
:help concealcursor
Sets the modes in which text in the cursor line can also be concealed.
When the current mode is listed then concealing happens just like in
other lines.
n Normal mode
v Visual mode
i Insert mode
c Command line editing, for 'incsearch'
'v' applies to all lines in the Visual area, not only the cursor.
A useful value is "nc". This is used in help files. So long as you
are moving around text is concealed, but when starting to insert text
or selecting a Visual area the concealed text is displayed, so that
you can see what you are doing.
Keep in mind that the cursor position is not always where it's
displayed. E.g., when moving vertically it may change column.
Also, :help conceallevel
Determine how text with the "conceal" syntax attribute |:syn-conceal|
is shown:
Value Effect ~
0 Text is shown normally
1 Each block of concealed text is replaced with one
character. If the syntax item does not have a custom
replacement character defined (see |:syn-cchar|) the
character defined in 'listchars' is used (default is a
space).
It is highlighted with the "Conceal" highlight group.
2 Concealed text is completely hidden unless it has a
custom replacement character defined (see
|:syn-cchar|).
3 Concealed text is completely hidden.
Only one command is needed: set concealcursor=n
I might have a better idea—you can pass it through sed (using %!sed) or really do a bunch of other :substitute commands—whatever edits you need to get rid of the color codes.
When you’re done, make sure to set nomodified—this forces vim to think there haven’t been any changes!
I noted that the 'showbreak' symbol is highlighted with the highlight "NonText" color-element. NonText is also used for the EOL Characters.
I would like to keep the highlight-color for the EOL characters but want to change it for the showbreak symbol is that possible?
Another problem is that my showbreak symbol is not displayed.
I would like to use this symbol "↳" and put it in the linenumbers column (using set cpoptions+=n). I can't find out how to display the symbol and how to put a space after the showbreak symbol (between the text and the symbol).
Can anyone help me?
I don't think you're going to get highlighting to be different than the EOL character, at least I am not aware of a way to do that.
For the second part I can help with. I was able to get "↳ " to show up in my line number column with the following settings:
let &showbreak = '↳ '
set wrap
set cpo=n
Note that there is a space after the ↳. This lines up nice until you have > 9 lines in the file. If you wanted it to line up with the last character of the number column regardless of the number of lines I'm not sure what you're going to have to do.
Edit: I've recently written a proof-of-concept function for someone on IRC that highlights the first character on a line that has been wrapped with a different highlight group. It hasn't been tested much but it seems to work. Not exactly what you're looking for but maybe it's worth a look.
:help hl-NonText makes it pretty clear that you cannot have different colors for the 'showbreak' string and other non-text strings, of which eol is a member (see :help 'listchars'):
NonText
'~' and '#' at the end of the window, characters from 'showbreak' and
other characters that do not really exist in the text (e.g., ">"
displayed when a double-wide character doesn't fit at the end of the
line).
If you're willing to accept this limitation (#elliottcable) hi! link NonText LineNr will match the 'showbreak' string to the line number colors.
If you really wanted to get clever, as a compromise you could create a mapping or command to toggle between ':set list' and ':set nolist' that would also adjust the NonText highlight setting simultaneously.
If you use :set relativenumber (added in vim 7.3), :set showbreak=↳\ \ \ will reliably keep your 'showbreak' neatly lined up since the number width will not change as you navigate through the file. (This in addition to the :set cpo+=n and :set wrap #Randy Morris mentioned in his answer.)
You'll definitely need UTF-8 for the ↳ character, since it does not appear in other encodings. I'd strongly recommend you carefully document your encoding problems, with details about how to reproduce them along with your OS, its version, and the :version output of vim, and post them as separate questions. UTF-8 should be helping you wrangle multiple languages rather than being an impediment.