Foo<\/code> to the class Foo<\/code>:<\/p>\nsyntax keyword Foo Foo<\/code><\/p>\nYou might wonder where this piece of code shall be written to. It is a vim command so you can simply enter in vim but a more appropriate place is a new file in the syntax folder under your vim configuration path. My Kubuntu and my Debian installation place it under ~\/.vim\/syntax<\/code>. For the purpose of this tutorial we create highlighting for the Filetype bar<\/code>. Hence, the syntax file is ~\/.vim\/syntax\/bar.vim<\/code>.<\/p>\nThe next step is to define how the class Foo is highlighted. This can be achieved by the following line:<\/p>\n
highlight Foo cterm=bold,underline<\/code><\/p>\nIn a more understandable language this means: “Dear computer, please highlight every piece of my text which is classified as Foo by using bold font and underlining it, as long as we’re on a color terminal!” By adding “term=bold,underline” a similar rule is defined for a monochrome terminal and, eventually, we can define rules for “gui” in a similar way.<\/p>\n
The syntax so far should look like:<\/p>\n
\nif exists(\"b:current_syntax\")
\nfinish
\nendif<\/code><\/p>\nsyntax keyword Foo Foo
\nhighlight Foo cterm=bold,underline<\/p>\n
let b:current_syntax=bar<\/p>\n
There is some yet unexplained decoration. They prevent several multiple syntax files to be loaded at the same time and are not required – but nice to have.<\/p>\n
Activating the style file<\/h5>\n
Since you most likely created the style file within VIM you can now directly switch to your new highlighting by using the command: set syntax=bar<\/code>. The result should look something like:<\/p>\n![\"All](\"http:\/\/blog.knofafo.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/example_01-300x123.png\")
<\/a>All “Foo”s are set in bold font and underlined<\/p><\/div>\n
Instead of defining every highlighting class on your own one cal also revert to predefined classes like: Todo, Comment, Statement, Type, Constant, PreProc. Instead of the above our syntax file could contain the line<\/p>\n
hi link Foo Error<\/code><\/p>\nIn that case the example looks different:<\/p>\n
![\"All](\"http:\/\/blog.knofafo.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/example_02-300x145.png\")
<\/a>All Foo have a red background<\/p><\/div>\n
More about the highlight<\/code> command<\/h5>\nWe saw how to link a new highlighting class against an existing one and now let me tell you a bit more about defining your own style – this tutorial won’t go any deeper. We have three relevant terminals: gui – which you encounter for instance when using gvim<\/i>, cterm – probably used most often on modern computers; it belongs to the normal shell version of vim on a terminal with colored output, and term – the monochrome variant of cterm; of course, no color options are possible with this term. A situation where the latter becomes relevant is printing on a grayscale printer.<\/p>\n
For all terminals you can define (note the the abilities of the frontends differ):<\/p>\n
\n- font appearance:
term|cterm|gui={list}<\/code> — any (comma-separated) combination from: bold, underline, undercurl, reverse, inverse, italic, standout, NONE, where NONE resets previosly defined settings<\/li>\n- font color:
ctermfg|guifg={color}<\/code> — in cterm the color is an integer or a color name, for the gui you can additionally use HTML color codes<\/li>\n- background color:
ctermbg|guibg={color}<\/code> — same as above<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nExample:
\n
\nhi Foo ctermbg=Green ctermfg=White cterm=bold,underline
\n<\/code><\/p>\nSidenote: vim-commands may be abbreviated. Just strip letters from the end of the command. This is fine as long as the remainder is still unique. So just type hi<\/code> instead of highlight<\/code> or syn<\/code> instead of syntax<\/code>.<\/p>\nDefining syntax elements<\/h5>\n
We started with a simple keyword. But that’s not the power of syntax hightlight — although it is important. Since this tutorial is not aiming at explaing how to use regexps within vim-files or even in general, I encourage to make sure you know enough.<\/p>\n
The rules are simple enough:
\n
\nsyn region textregion start=\"pattern1\" end=\"pattern2\"
\nsyn match textpattern \"pattern\"<\/p>\nhi textregion ctermbg=white ctermfg=green
\nhi textpattern ctermbg=green ctermfg=white
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
One picture cann tell more than a hundred words, so just have look:
\n![\"example_pattern\"](\"http:\/\/blog.knofafo.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/example_pattern-300x69.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"All](\"http:\/\/blog.knofafo.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/example_01.png\")
<\/a>