Vim - Force extra spacing between lines for underlining - linux

While using Vim for most of my coding, I typically prefer to have the current line under-lined so it's easier to see where I am in my code. I avoid using things like line-highlighting because it usually makes things harder to see with my bright-text-on-dark-background theme (ie: 'torte' colorscheme).
Here is part of my Vim colorscheme:
hi CursorLine guibg=#0F2130 ctermbg=NONE cterm=underline
hi CursorColumn guibg=#0F2130 ctermbg=darkgray cterm=NONE
I then enable these features in my .vimrc file (ie: ~/.vimrc).
So, in my case, the current line has a colored underline which is the inverted color of the character above it, while the current column has a dark-grey background, while all other text just has a black background.
The only problem I am having here is that I cannot see underscore ('_') characters while coding because the underline for the current line is the exact same color and thickness as the underscore characters. The only workaround, if its even possible, that would make sense here is to:
Increase the spacing between lines
Make the underline appear a few pixels further below my text
Is anything like this possible in Vim (not gVIM)?
Thank you.

If you are using gVim:
:hi! def link CursorLine SpellBad
It will use curl-underline.
Changing the linespace to 10+ will display _ above the Cursorline:
:set linespace=10

#kev: +1; It works in gVIM
However, it seems this just can't happen in Vim, as other commenters have noted.
In the end, I just set the background to be dark grey (ie: ctermbg=253), and then set the cursorline to be darker (ie: ctermbg=black cterm=NONE).
From there, I updated my BASHRC file to contain the following:
export TERM=xterm-256color
This, of all luck, ends up looking better than my previous colorscheme. I now have a modified version of the standard "slate" color scheme with a very dark gray background (ie: ctermbg=253) while the current line has a solid black background.

Related

vim cursorline not working properly

I have the following in my .vimrc:
hi CursorLine ctermfg=00 ctermbg=00 cterm=bold
I should be unable to read the line the cursor is on, but I am able, because the text appears in grey. If I remove cterm=bold, I get true black, so it seems to be black or bold, but not both. Is "bold" a variable for a color in the theme (solarized light)? Or is my terminal theme overriding the fg color somehow? I get the exact same results in various terminal apps (on Xubuntu).
By typing :help attr-list you will get a whole list of possible values for cterm argument:
bold underline undercurl
inverse italic standout
term={attr-list} attr-list highlight-term E418
attr-list is a comma separated list (without spaces) of the
following items (in any order):
bold
underline
undercurl not always available
reverse
inverse same as reverse
italic
standout
NONE no attributes used (used to reset it)
These terms are not colors but they are considered as typographical emphasis. They add more font and shape to the text.
First, highlighting of the cursorline is disabled by default so there's no reason whatsoever to hack your colorscheme if you don't want it: just don't enable it. For the record, that feature is enabled with :set cursorline and disabled with :set nocursorline.
See :help 'cusorline'.
Second, the "bold" keyword is passed more or less directly to your terminal emulator which is ultimately in charge of deciding what to do with it. It may display "bold" text with a bolded font or use a brighter or color or… whatever. Use "bold" only if you know how your terminal emulator will react to it.
Third, Solarized is an over-engineered and very poorly written colorscheme that's a lot harder to hack than necessary. It's really a bad platform for experiments and customization.

How to make vim's replacement selection blinking

In latex files I have the on-fly spelling switched so you can imagine that together with the syntax highlighting there is already a lot of colors in the terminal screen. When in such environment I am running a string replacement, say with :%s/x/y/gc I need a lot of time to identify where the string-to-be-replaced is located in all this color mess. Is it possible to make vim's current selection blink?
You change the highlighting of the to-be-replaced text with highlight IncSearch.
For example,
:highlight IncSearch ctermfg=Red guifg=Red
highlights the text with a red background (despite it being fg not bg).
However, I don't think there's any way to make it blink (and are you sure you really want that?). You might be able to use italics or underlines instead. See :h highlight for the options that are available.

Spelling errors hidden while highlighting line in vim

When there's a misspelling (with set spell), it highlights it red (good!), but when the line is highlighted as my current line the red goes away (bad). Removing set cul fixes the problem, but how do I keep the word marked red while being highlighted? I may have multiple words misspelled on a line and also while typing the misspellings are hidden until I go to the next which kinda sucks.
vimrc: https://gist.github.com/OscarGodson/d1b05d52df4ff160b891
colorscheme: https://github.com/tomasr/molokai
1) one could change the vim color scheme, or the SpellBad highlight scheme; one example of the second case is to add in vimrc the following,
hi clear SpellBad
hi SpellBad cterm=bold
2) (not a solution) someone might find 'spell checking while composing' is a bit annoying / distracting and prefer switching the spell checking off until they finish writing the article.
The problem is that the cursorline highlighting has priority over the syntax highlighting (spell errors belong to that), and that cannot be changed. (You can only specify the priority with the newer matchadd() functions.)
I've once raised this issue for error highlighting, but nothing came out of it. (I'd still like to implement a patch for that one day.)
The problem is only about overlap of background highlighting; in GVIM, most color schemes use the undercurl attribute to avoid that issue. In the console, you can only change the highlighting to foreground color, italic or bold attributes to work around it.
workaround
One clever workaround involves swapping the foreground and background colors while adding the reverse attribute: Turn
hi SpellBad cterm=NONE ctermbg=red ctermfg=white
to
hi SpellBad cterm=reverse ctermbg=white ctermfg=red
These two changes cancel each other out normally, but on a CursorLine, the foreground color now contributes to the coloring, turning hard-to-read white-on-cursorline to red-on-cursorline.
Curiously, and jumping off of both answers from the other posters, adding the following in my vimrc made my red background persist accidentally due to my terminal not being able to fulfill the "italic" switch because it can't mix font types like that (I think). I stuck it in the section of my vimrc that is tested for gvim because gvim underlines my spelling mistakes without issue. Give it a try!
if has("gui_running")
#all my gvim settings
else #we're in terminal
hi clear SpellBad
hi SpellBad cterm=bold,italic ctermfg=red
endif

How to change the color of highlighted misspelled word?

In the theme I'm using for vim, the strings are shown in red color but the problem is I have spellcheck on and the misspelled words are also shown in red color.
This makes it hard to see what is the mistake until you go to that word and delete any character.
I want to make the highlightation of the misspelled word in somewhat lighter then it currently. Say #ff2929.
You can use the hi (short for :help highlight) command in your ~/.vimrc. The general structure is:
hi SpellBad ctermfg=015 ctermbg=000 cterm=none guifg=#FFFFFF guibg=#000000 gui=none
The cterm is for terminal vim and the gui is for gVim. The fg stands for foreground and is the color of the letters and the bg stands for background and is the color behind the letters.
Terminal colors can be 0-15 for standard terminal colors (8 normal and 8 bright) or 0-255 for terms supporting 256 colors, like xterm-256colors. The gui colors are in hexadecimal format. xterm-color-table is a useful reference for both 256 and hexadecimal colors. The final option can be used to specify bold, italic, or none (neither).
In your case, it might be simplest to set the foreground to black to make the letters stand out. First, find a word that's mispelled with :set spell and then typing asdflkjasldf or something. Then type :hi SpellBad ctermfg=000 guifg=#000 and see if that's a solution you like. If not, use the xterm-color-table or another color reference to find a color you do like.
Try this:
:hi SpellBad guibg=#ff2929 ctermbg=224
guibg is for GUI
ctermbg is for TERM
I found the following to halfway work for a more complex example involving colorscheme, but it is sensitive to the order of .vimrc commands. I tested with Cygwin/mintty and Git Bash, vim 8.0, with similar results. I edited a markdown file with "misspelled" words in headings and paragraphs, so an additional factor is the auto-formatting that vim is doing for markdown. If the .vimrc order is spell, colorscheme, and then hi (trying to use white text on red background), the result for misspelled words is white foreground on black background (image below), regardless of whether in markdown heading or paragraph. This is OK but I'd prefer to have the background for misspelled words be more eye-catching, which is why I specified red background.
However, if the order is spell, hi, and colorscheme, the result is OK in paragraphs but undesired pink on red in headers (image below). This is actually the original behavior without hi, which makes sense because the colorscheme is probably stepping on the hi settings. Based on other testing, the relative position of hi and colorscheme is what is important.
I think I'm going to go with the first option because at least the highlights seem to be in all content, but it would be nice if the red background is used. The following is my .vimrc lines for the first case. Any guidance to fix this would be appreciated.
" Turn on spell-checker
set spell
" Color scheme
" To pick from available list do:
" :colorscheme _space_ Tab
" Reasonable options seem to be: koehler, murphy, elford
colorscheme koehler
" Using the colorscheme with spellchecking results in highlights with
" pink text on red background, which is hard to read, so change the highlight color.
" Color table: https://github.com/guns/xterm-color-table.vim
" Use white text on red background for misspelled words.
hi SpellBad ctermfg=015 ctermbg=009 cterm=bold guibg=#ff0000 guifg=#000000 gui=bold

VIM initial settings: change background color for line number on the left side?

I use _vimrc to configure my vim 7.2 (windows) default settings. One setting "set number" will display line numbers on the left side. My vim background color is white (I cannot find setting for this. Maybe the default is white. Anyway I accept this setting).
I would like the background color for line numbers to be Grey or dimmed color. What is the command I can put in my _vimrc to configure this default setting?
highlight LineNr ctermfg=grey ctermbg=white
To make the line number column transparent (the same color as the main background) you can try setting this in your .vimrc:
highlight clear LineNr
You can also clear the so-called sign column (used by gitgutter, etc) as well:
highlight clear SignColumn
This way, no matter what color scheme you use, both columns' background will be compatible.
In my _vimrc, here is the setting:
highlight LineNr guibg=grey
or
hi LineNr guibg=grey
I don't need to set fore-color, the default is yellow and it is OK for me.
guibg and guifg are for vims which are not in terminal. For terminal you use ctermfg ctermbg. Usually in GUI vims you have more colors support and you simply want to avoid the background.
So I usually use this:
highlight LineNr guibg=NONE

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