matchit functionality and syntax files

[Ed S. Peschko]

All,

I've been editing html files as of late, and have run into some usability snags.

In particular - what's the rationale behind having syntax coloring turned on for
a given file, yet 'matchit' turned off?

IMO, This makes no sense - you need to bounce between tags to get anything done with
html (likewise all non-bracketed languages like python and ruby ) *far* more than you
need to see code highlighted, and it is a non-trivial operation to get it configured
to do the shift-% trick (still going through the docs and figuring it out)

Could vim possibly be configured in the next release to do the intelligent thing via
default and to pick up the appropriate matchit commands per file extension, unless
overriden by another flag?

Or is there something preventing this from happening? It sure would make the job
of editing these files a lot easier..

Ed

[Ed S. Peschko]

ps -

where exactly are the b:match_words variables defined for a given language?

I would have thought it would be as easy as saying:

:source $VIMRUNTIME/macros/matchit.vim

to get the correct b:match_words variable for my current extension being edited,
but this doesn't work.

Is there a plugin with the b:match_words variables defined for all languages, or
am I just missing something?

Ed

[Tony Mechelynck]

1. Matchit is non-vi-compatible, that's why it isn't installed by default.
Installing it is a simple matter. You can even make it work for all future
releases of Vim and matchit in one fell swoop, by creating a file named
$VIM/vimfiles/plugin/matchit.vim with the following contents:

runtime! macros/matchit.vim

You will still have to copy the matchit help (when it changes) to your
$VIM/vimfiles/doc/ subdirectory and run ":helptags" there.

2. Most "modern" ftplugins set b:match_words as a matter of course, at least
if they can detect that matchit is installed: it works flawlessly for me in
HTML. Of course it requires filetype plugins to be ON: include either

runtime vimrc_example.vim
or
filetype plugin on

somewhere near the top of your vimrc (but after the ":language" command if you
use one).

For some languages, there are no special "words" to be matched: there you can
get the additional matchit functionality (such as comment skipping) by means
of some autocommand similar to the following, which I have in my vimrc:

augroup vimrclocal
au FileType c,cpp,css,javascript
\ let b:match_words = &matchpairs
augroup END

Best regards,
Tony.
--
Eisenhower was very nice,
Nixon was his only vice.
-- C. Degen

[Ed S. Peschko]

ok, I see your points about why matching isn't on by default... but surely couldn't
this all by encapsulated by:

:mtc on

the same way that

:syn on

toggles on syntax highlighting?

Ed

[Gary Johnson]

On 2007-09-23, "Ed S. Peschko" <es...@pge.com> wrote:
> ok, I see your points about why matching isn't on by default... but surely couldn't
> this all by encapsulated by:
>
> :mtc on
>
> the same way that
>
> :syn on
>
> toggles on syntax highlighting?

What do you envision being encapsulated by ":mtc on" that is not
handled by "runtime! macros/matchit.vim"?

Gary