Semantic-Highlight.vim

Where every variable is a different color, an idea popularized by Evan Brooks' blog post.

This is an early version of an experimental but developing plugin.

Install

Vundle or Neobundle:

Plugin 'jaxbot/semantic-highlight.vim'

Pathogen:

git clone https://github.com/jaxbot/semantic-highlight.vim.git

Usage

In a file, run :SemanticHighlight to convert variables into colors. Run :SemanticHighlightRevert to revert.

You can also map :SemanticHighlightToggle to a shortcut to toggle the effect on and off:

:nnoremap <Leader>s :SemanticHighlightToggle<cr>

To have the sematic highlight trigger whenever you enter insert mode and change text add

autocmd BufEnder * :SemanticHighlight

Note: On slower machines this could be potentially bottlenecking

Customization

###Colors Set g:semanticTermColors and/or g:semanticGUIColors to a list of colors, then run RebuildSemanticColors to flush the cache. The color lists look like:

let s:semanticGUIColors = [ '#72d572', '#c5e1a5', '#e6ee9c', '#fff59d', '#ffe082', '#ffcc80', '#ffab91', '#bcaaa4', '#b0bec5', '#ffa726', '#ff8a65', '#f9bdbb', '#f9bdbb', '#f8bbd0', '#e1bee7', '#d1c4e9', '#ffe0b2', '#c5cae9', '#d0d9ff', '#b3e5fc', '#b2ebf2', '#b2dfdb', '#a3e9a4', '#dcedc8' , '#f0f4c3', '#ffb74d' ]

or

let g:semanticTermColors = [28,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,25,9,10,34,12,13,14,15,16,125,124,19]

Either list can also be set in your vimrc

###Blacklist Certain words can be reserved (such as keywords in the languages you use)

The built in blacklist is

['if', 'endif', 'for', 'endfor', 'while', 'endwhile', 'endfunction', 'break', 'goto', 'else', 'call']

but can be overidden in your .vimc with

let g:blacklist = ['some','keywords','you','would','like','this','plugin','to','ignore']

###Caching The plugin will store previously seen values in a dictionary in order to keep colors consistent when editing. This behavior can be disabled with

let g:useCaching = 0

Kudos

Big thanks to John Leimon, whose Semantic C/C++ Vimscript was inspirational in the construction of this one.

About me

I'm Jonathan. I like to hack around with Vim, Node.js, embedded hardware, and Glass. If any of that sounds interesting, follow me!