syncopate

(Syn)tax (cop)y-p(a)s(te).

What's it for?

To make sharing beautiful code as frictionless as possible.

Say you have a nicely syntax-highlighted buffer in vim. This plugin lets you open a browser tab with that buffer's contents, including the highlighting. If you copy-paste into a webmail window, a Google Doc, etc., the syntax highlighting stays intact.

Best of all, it cleans up after itself: it won't clutter your directories with .html files.

How do I install it?

Depends on your plugin manager.

Note that syncopate is a maktaba plugin, so you will need to install maktaba (if your plugin manager doesn't handle dependencies). If you want to configure the plugin, we strongly recommend installing glaive as well.

Here are instructions for Vundle, the most popular plugin manager. Add the following lines between your call vundle#begin() and call vundle#end() lines.

" Dependency; required for vim-syncopate.
Plugin google/vim-maktaba

" Strongly recommended: easy configuration of maktaba plugins.
Plugin google/vim-glaive

Plugin google/vim-syncopate

Syncopate is expected to work on any platform vim supports, but the default configuration may not work on your system and direct-to-clipboard support hasn't been implemented for some platforms. Contributions welcome!

xclip

Syncopate requires xclip to manipulate the clipboard. In most cases, installing it from your package manager should just work.

Arch Linux's official repository has an xclip (0.12.4) which is too old: it doesn't support --target. Arch users should install xclip-svn from AUR:

yaourt -S xclip-svn

How do I use it?

Use the clipboard directly

Use the :SyncopateExportToClipboard command. It populates the clipboard with the contents of your buffer (or just part of it, if you're in visual mode), including highlighting. You can then paste your beautiful code into a compose window (such as Gmail).

Of course, it's even better with a keymapping, which you can enable using Glaive:

" This line needs to go anywhere after 'call vundle#end()'.
call glaive#Install()

" Enable keymappings.
Glaive syncopate plugin[mappings]

By default, syncopate's mappings all start with the prefix <Leader><. You can change the prefix by giving plugin[mappings] a value, like so:

Glaive syncopate plugin[mappings]='qwer'

The following examples will assume you're using the default prefix, and that your <Leader> is ,.

• ,< calls :SyncopateExportToClipboard on whatever motion you choose. (e.g., ,<ip will copy the current paragraph (ip) to the clipboard.)
• ,<> calls :SyncopateExportToClipboard on the whole buffer (or your selection in visual mode).

Put it in a browser window

Alternatively, you can use the :SyncopateExportToBrowser command. It opens the HTML in a new browser tab, so you can select regions interactively. Syncopate automatically cleans up the HTML file after opening the tab.

If you use :SyncopateExportToBrowser, be sure to copy with Ctrl-C (as opposed to mouse selection/middle-click); otherwise, the highlighting will not be retained.

How do I configure it?

There are a variety of syncopate-specific options: whether to change the colorscheme, which browser to use, etc. See :help syncopate-config.

For everything else, use the built-in options for the :TOhtml command: :help 2html.vim. (Options are down below, starting at :help g:html_diff_one_file.)

For example, the following line will exclude line numbers from the output, even if you use them in vim:

let g:html_number_lines = 0

So how's this different from plain :TOhtml?

Mainly convenience. Under the hood, :SyncopateExportToClipboard will:

1. Switch to the default colorscheme (it shows up better on white backgrounds).
2. Create the HTML version of your vim buffer.
3. Export it to the clipboard.
4. Restore your colorscheme, and any other settings it needed to change.

Simply running :TOhtml only does the second step. In particular, the third step is difficult to remember how to do. Without it, :TOhtml usually involves tiresome saving-and-subsequently-deleting of HTML files, and fiddling with a browser.