boxes/pages/editors-vim.md

title	permalink	created_at	last_modified_at
Editor Integration - Vim	editors-vim.html	1999-04-06	2021-05-04 22:00:00 +0200

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Integration with Vim

To call filters from vim, you need to press ! in visual mode or !! in normal mode. So the easiest way to tie in boxes with vim is by adding the following four lines to your .vimrc:

" sdlfkj comment
vmap ,mc !boxes -d c-cmt<CR>
nmap ,mc !!boxes -d c-cmt<CR>
vmap ,xc !boxes -d c-cmt -r<CR>
nmap ,xc !!boxes -d c-cmt -r<CR>

<CR> should be there literally; just paste the lines directly from your browser window. This would comment out the current line or the lines you have marked when you press ,mc (for make comment). Comments can be removed in the same way by pressing ,xc. Should you feel that ,mc is too long a combination to type, feel free to choose a shorter one. The above example assumes you are using the standard boxes config file, which features the c-cmt design. Of course, the same technique works for any other designs.

While the above example is nice, it does not offer much convenience when you are editing different languages a lot, because you need to remember the hotkey for each different box design. Fortunately, vim has a feature called autocommands. They can be used to automatically change the meaning of a key combination depending on what file you edit (any many other things too, of course). Autocommand syntax is

au[tocmd] [group] {event} {pat} [nested] {cmd}

We can leave out the group. For {event}, we choose BufEnter, which is generated every time you enter a new buffer, e.g. when starting vim or when switching between open files. {pat} is a file glob, and {cmd} is our call to boxes.

The lines below are from the author's .vimrc. They can be pasted directly from your browser window. Their effect is that ,mc and ,xc always generate the correct comments for many languages, including C, C++, HTML, Java, lex, yacc, shell scripts, Perl, etc. The default key binding is to generate shell comments using a pound sign (file glob of * at the start).

autocmd BufEnter * nmap ,mc !!boxes -d pound-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter * vmap ,mc !boxes -d pound-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter * nmap ,xc !!boxes -d pound-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter * vmap ,xc !boxes -d pound-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.html nmap ,mc !!boxes -d html-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.html vmap ,mc !boxes -d html-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.html nmap ,xc !!boxes -d html-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.html vmap ,xc !boxes -d html-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.[chly],*.[pc]c nmap ,mc !!boxes -d c-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.[chly],*.[pc]c vmap ,mc !boxes -d c-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.[chly],*.[pc]c nmap ,xc !!boxes -d c-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.[chly],*.[pc]c vmap ,xc !boxes -d c-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.C,*.cpp,*.java nmap ,mc !!boxes -d java-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.C,*.cpp,*.java vmap ,mc !boxes -d java-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.C,*.cpp,*.java nmap ,xc !!boxes -d java-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter *.C,*.cpp,*.java vmap ,xc !boxes -d java-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter .vimrc*,.exrc nmap ,mc !!boxes -d vim-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter .vimrc*,.exrc vmap ,mc !boxes -d vim-cmt<CR>
autocmd BufEnter .vimrc*,.exrc nmap ,xc !!boxes -d vim-cmt -r<CR>
autocmd BufEnter .vimrc*,.exrc vmap ,xc !boxes -d vim-cmt -r<CR>

{% comment %} ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- {% endcomment %} {% include heading.html level=4 slug="syntax-highlighting" text="Syntax Highlighting in Vim" %}

There is a [Vim syntax file](https://github.com/{{ site.github }}/blob/master/boxes.vim) for boxes configuration files, which you can install to have the boxes config colorized. On Windows, the file must be placed in the directory VIM_INSTALL_DIR\vimfiles\syntax.
Activate by set syn=boxes.