NAME

Text::VimColor - Syntax highlight text using Vim

VERSION

version 0.24

SYNOPSIS

use Text::VimColor;
my $syntax = Text::VimColor->new(
   file => $0,
   filetype => 'perl',
);

print $syntax->html;
print $syntax->xml;
print $syntax->ansi;

DESCRIPTION

This module tries to markup text files according to their syntax. It can be used to produce web pages with pretty-printed colorful source code samples. It can produce output in the following formats:

HTML: Valid XHTML 1.0, with the exact coloring and style left to a CSS stylesheet
XML: Pieces of text are marked with XML elements in a simple vocabulary, which can be converted to other formats, for example, using XSLT
Perl array: A simple Perl data structure, so that Perl code can be used to turn it into whatever is needed
ANSI Escape Sequences: A string marked with Term::ANSIColor suitable for printing to a terminal.

This module works by running the Vim text editor and getting it to apply its excellent syntax highlighting (aka 'font-locking') to an input file, and mark pieces of text according to whether it thinks they are comments, keywords, strings, etc. The Perl code then reads back this markup and converts it to the desired output format.

This is an object-oriented module. To use it, create an object with the "new" function (as shown in "SYNOPSIS") and then call methods to get the markup out.

METHODS

new

my $tvc = Text::VimColor->new(%options)

Returns a syntax highlighting object. Pass it a hash of options.

The following options are recognized:

file

The file to syntax highlight. Can be either a filename or an open file handle.

Note that using a filename might allow Vim to guess the file type from its name if none is specified explicitly.

If the file isn't specified while creating the object, it can be given later in a call to the "syntax_mark_file" method (see below), allowing a single Text::VimColor object to be used with multiple input files.

string

Use this to pass a string to be used as the input. This is an alternative to the file option. A reference to a string will also work.

The "syntax_mark_string" method is another way to use a string as input.

If you provide a character (unencoded) string (recommended) it will be passed to vim encoded in UTF-8 and your result will be character string.

filetype

Specify the type of file Vim should expect, in case Vim's automatic detection by filename or contents doesn't get it right. This is particularly important when providing the file as a string or file handle, since Vim won't be able to use the file extension to guess the file type.

The file types recognized by Vim are short strings like 'perl' or 'lisp'. They are the names of files in the 'syntax' directory in the Vim distribution.

This option, whether or not it is passed to "new", can be overridden when calling "syntax_mark_file" and "syntax_mark_string", so you can use the same object to process multiple files of different types.

html_full_page

By default the "html" output method returns a fragment of HTML, not a full file. To make useful output this must be wrapped in a <pre> element and a stylesheet must be included from somewhere. Setting the "html_full_page" option will instead make the "html" method return a complete stand-alone XHTML file.

Note that while this is useful for testing, most of the time you'll want to put the syntax highlighted source code in a page with some other content, in which case the default output of the "html" method is more appropriate.

html_inline_stylesheet

Turned on by default, but has no effect unless "html_full_page" is also enabled.

This causes the CSS stylesheet defining the colors to be used to render the markup to be be included in the HTML output, in a <style> element. Turn it off to instead use a <link> to reference an external stylesheet (recommended if putting more than one page on the web).

html_stylesheet

Ignored unless html_full_page and html_inline_stylesheet are both enabled.

This can be set to a stylesheet to include inline in the HTML output (the actual CSS, not the filename of it).

html_stylesheet_file

Ignored unless html_full_page and html_inline_stylesheet are both enabled.

This can be the filename of a stylesheet to copy into the HTML output, or a file handle to read one from. If neither this nor html_stylesheet are given, the supplied stylesheet light.css will be used instead.

html_stylesheet_url

Ignored unless html_full_page is enabled and html_inline_stylesheet is disabled.

This can be used to supply the URL (relative or absolute) or the stylesheet to be referenced from the HTML <link> element in the header. If this isn't given it will default to using a file:// URL to reference the supplied light.css stylesheet, which is only really useful for testing.

xml_root_element

By default this is true. If set to a false value, XML output will not be wrapped in a root element called <syn:syntax>, but will be otherwise the same. This could allow XML output for several files to be concatenated, but to make it valid XML a root element must be added. Disabling this option will also remove the binding of the namespace prefix syn:, so an xmlns:syn attribute would have to be added elsewhere.

vim_command

The name of the executable which will be run to invoke Vim. The default is vim.

vim_options

A reference to an array of options to pass to Vim. The default options are:

[qw( -RXZ -i NONE -u NONE -N -n ), "+set nomodeline"]

You can overwrite the default options by setting this. To merely append additional options to the defaults use extra_vim_options.

extra_vim_options

A reference to an array of additional options to pass to Vim. These are appended to the default vim_options.

vim_let

A reference to a hash of options to set in Vim before the syntax file is loaded. Each of these is set using the let command to the value specified. No escaping is done on the values, they are executed exactly as specified.

Values in this hash override some default options. Use a value of undef to prevent a default option from being set at all. The defaults are as follows:

(
   perl_include_pod => 1,     # Recognize POD inside Perl code
   'b:is_bash' => 1,          # Allow Bash syntax in shell scripts
)

These settings can be modified later with the vim_let() method.

vim_let

$tvc->vim_let( %variables );
$tvc->vim_let( perl_no_extended_vars => 1 );

Change the options that are set with the Vim let command when Vim is run. See "new" for details.

syntax_mark_file

$tvc->syntax_mark_file( $file, %options )

Mark up the specified file. Subsequent calls to the output methods will then return the markup. It is not necessary to call this if a file or string option was passed to "new".

Returns the object it was called on, so an output method can be called on it directly:

foreach (@files) {
  print $tvc->syntax_mark_file($_)->html;
}

You can override the file type set in new() by passing in a filetype option, like so:

$tvc->syntax_mark_file($filename, filetype => 'perl');

This option will only affect the syntax coloring for that one call, not for any subsequent ones on the same object.

syntax_mark_string

$tvc->syntax_mark_string($string, %options)

Does the same as syntax_mark_file (see above) but uses a string as input. The string can also be a reference to a string.

Returns the object it was called on. Supports the filetype option just as syntax_mark_file does.

ansi

Return the string marked with ANSI escape sequences (using Term::ANSIColor) based on the Vim syntax coloring of the input file.

This is the default format for the included text-vimcolor script which makes it like a colored version of cat(1).

You can alter the color scheme using the TEXT_VIMCOLOR_ANSI environment variable in the format of "SynGroup=color;". For example:

TEXT_VIMCOLOR_ANSI='Comment=green;Statement = magenta; '

html

Return XHTML markup based on the Vim syntax coloring of the input file.

Unless the html_full_page option is set, this will only return a fragment of HTML, which can then be incorporated into a full page. The fragment will be valid as either HTML or XHTML.

The only markup used for the actual text will be <span> elements wrapped around appropriate pieces of text. Each one will have a class attribute set to a name which can be tied to a foreground and background color in a stylesheet. The class names used will have the prefix syn, for example synComment. For the full list see "HIGHLIGHTING TYPES".

xml

Returns markup in a simple XML vocabulary. Unless the xml_root_element option is turned off (it's on by default) this will produce a complete XML document, with all the markup inside a <syntax> element.

This XML output can be transformed into other formats, either using programs which read it with an XML parser, or using XSLT. See the text-vimcolor(1) program for an example of how XSLT can be used with XSL-FO to turn this into PDF.

The markup will consist of mixed content with elements wrapping pieces of text which Vim recognized as being of a particular type. The names of the elements used are the ones listed in "HIGHLIGHTING TYPES". below.

The <syntax> element will declare the namespace for all the elements produced, which will be http://ns.laxan.com/text-vimcolor/1. It will also have an attribute called filename, which will be set to the value returned by the input_filename method, if that returns something other than undef.

The XML namespace is also available as $Text::VimColor::NAMESPACE_ID.

marked

This output function returns the marked-up text in the format which the module stores it in internally. The data looks like this:

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper($tvc->marked);

# produces
$VAR1 = [
   [ 'Statement', 'my' ],
   [ '', ' ' ],
   [ 'Identifier', '$syntax' ],
   [ '', ' = ' ],
    ...
];

This method returns a reference to an array. Each item in the array is itself a reference to an array of two items: the first is one of the names listed in "HIGHLIGHTING TYPES" (or an empty string if none apply), and the second is the actual piece of text.

input_filename

Returns the filename of the input file, or undef if a filename wasn't specified.

dist_file

my $full_path = Text::VimColor->dist_file($file);
my $xsl = $tvc->dist_file('light.xsl');

Returns the path to the specified file that is part of the Text-VimColor dist (for example, mark.vim or light.css).

Can be called as an instance method or a class method.

This is a thin wrapper around "dist_file" in File::ShareDir and is mostly for internal use.

HIGHLIGHTING TYPES

The following list gives the names of highlighting types which will be set for pieces of text. For HTML output, these will appear as CSS class names, except that they will all have the prefix syn added. For XML output, these will be the names of elements which will all be in the namespace http://ns.laxan.com/text-vimcolor/1.

Here is the complete list:

Comment
Constant
Identifier
Statement
PreProc
Type
Special
Underlined
Error
Todo

These modules allow Text::VimColor to be used more easily in particular environments:

BUGS

Quite a few, actually:

Apparently this module doesn't always work if run from within a 'gvim' window, although I've been unable to reproduce this so far. CPAN RT #11555.
There should be a way of getting a DOM object back instead of an XML string.
It should be possible to choose between HTML and XHTML, and perhaps there should be some control over the DOCTYPE declaration when a complete file is produced.
With Vim versions earlier than 6.2 there is a 2 second delay each time Vim is run.
This requires vim version 6 (it has since 2003). There may be workarounds to support version 5 (technically 5.4+). Upgrading vim is a much better idea, but if you need support for older versions please file a ticket (with patches if possible).

TODO

option for 'set number'
make global vars available through methods
list available syntaxes? (see IkiWiki::Plugin::syntax::Vim)

SUPPORT

Perldoc

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc Text::VimColor

Websites

The following websites have more information about this module, and may be of help to you. As always, in addition to those websites please use your favorite search engine to discover more resources.

MetaCPAN

A modern, open-source CPAN search engine, useful to view POD in HTML format.

http://metacpan.org/release/Text-VimColor

Bugs / Feature Requests

Please report any bugs or feature requests by email to bug-text-vimcolor at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Text-VimColor. You will be automatically notified of any progress on the request by the system.

Source Code

https://github.com/rwstauner/Text-VimColor

git clone https://github.com/rwstauner/Text-VimColor.git

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Vim script mark.vim is a crufted version of 2html.vim by Bram Moolenaar <Bram@vim.org> and David Ne\v{c}as (Yeti) <yeti@physics.muni.cz>.

AUTHORS

Geoff Richards <qef@laxan.com>
Randy Stauner <rwstauner@cpan.org>

CONTRIBUTORS

Geoff Richards <geoffr@cpan.org>
Vyacheslav Matyukhin <mmcleric@yandex-team.ru>
mattn <mattn.jp@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

To install Text::VimColor, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.

cpanm

cpanm Text::VimColor

CPAN shell

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Text::VimColor

For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.

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