Vim

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http://www.vim.org/

This page will be about editing ConTeXt source in (g)vim.

context.vim

Nikolai Weibull was the first one who wrote context.vim files and submitted them to the official vim cvs repository. They will be part of the official Vim 7. However, as it is still in alpha state at the time of writing, you probably don't have those files in Vim 6.

You can download the files at:

• runtime/syntax/context.vim - syntax highlighting
• runtime/ftplugin/context.vim - filetype specific behaviour (like repeating comments at the beginning of line)

If you don't use LaTeX (if your *.tex files are mostly for ConTeXt), you can add the following lines to filetype.vim:

" ConTeXt
augroup filetypedetect
	au! BufRead,BufNewFile *.tex		setfiletype context
augroup END

so the next time you open a *.tex file in vim, context.vim will be loaded instead of tex.vim.

It's mostly up to you which syntax highlighting scheme you prefer. context.vim is a lighter version than tex.vim. It knows some ConTeXt details that are not implemented in tex.vim, while math and some other TeX features are not supported yet in context.vim.

If you feel that something is missing, please contribute!

TODO

• extract data from texweb and create syntax highlighting definitions for ConTeXt
• add metafun macros (from metafun manual)
• enable metapost/metafun, JavaScript and XML inside ConTeXt
• some essential math support
• proper URL highlighting ('%' doesn't start a comment, ...) [request by VnPenguin]
• perhaps borrow something from http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/?
• Have a better filetype detection for *.tex files, to distinguish between plain tex, latex and context files

Other useful vim plugins

• autocomplete: http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=182, almost undocumented, but life-saving
• spell-checker: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=499, but native spell-checking support will be included in Vim 7

Powerful key mappings

a set of buffer-local insert-mode macros to speed up ConTeXt source editing (by D.A. 19:52, 8 Jul 2005 (CEST))

• I have remapped <leader> to comma (one hardly ever use commas just before a letter)
• two types of mappings: stand-alone and changing the previous word
• usage of mappings that change the previous word: type the name of the macro and ,ta (for tag, use your leader character instead of the comma); it created \start-\stop block of the macro
• put the code into .vim/after/plugin/context.vim

let maplocalleader = mapleader

" Make start-stop block out of the previous word
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>ta \start<Cr>\stop<Cr><Esc>4bhdiw$pj$pO
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>tb \begin<Cr>\end<Cr><Esc>4bhdiw$pj$pO

" Itemize
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>it \startitemize<Cr>\stopitemize<Esc>O\item<Space>
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>en \startitemize[n]<Cr>\stopitemize<Esc>O\item<Space>
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>i<Return> \item<Space>

" Font switching and emphasize
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>em {\em }<Left>
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>sc {\sc }<Left>

" Define... and setup...
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>de \define
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>se \setup

" Typing and type
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>ty \type{}<Left>
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>typ typing<LocalLeader>ta

" Quote and quotation
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>" \quotation{}<Left>
imap <buffer> <LocalLeader>' \quote{}<Left>

Makefile

For your ConTeXt document, you can prepare a Makefile like this one (Contributed by Buggs):

# An example Makefile to compile a context file, paper.tex
paper.pdf: paper.tex
    texexec paper

test:
    xpdf paper.pdf

clean:
    rm *.bbl *.dvi *.aux *.log *.blg

If you put these mappings to your .vimrc file, you can than compile the document with F9 and preview it with F8:

" map ":make" to the F9 key
imap <F9> <ESC>:make<CR>
nmap <F9> :make<CR>

"map ":make test" to the F8 key
imap <F8> <ESC>:make test<CR>
nmap <F8> :make test<CR>

MetaPost extension

Should highlight the syntax between btex/verbatimtex ... etex as TeX.

This doesn't work 100% (problems with commands inside comments): If anyone knows how to repair that, please do so. It would be nice if this would have landed in the official metapost syntax highlighting script for vim one day.

unlet b:current_syntax
syn include @texTop syntax/tex.vim
" MetaPost has TeX inserts for typeset labels
" verbatimtex, btex, and etex will be treated as keywords
syn match mpTeXbegin "\(verbatimtex\|btex\)"
syn match mpTeXend "etex"
syn region mpTeXinsert start="\(verbatimtex\|btex\)"hs=e+1 end="etex"he=s-1 \
                       contains=@texTop,mpTeXbegin,mpTeXend containedin=ALL keepend