From f0f0513c291d8cb4f39939b379353a53be2c68c1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Peter Odding Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 03:43:31 +0200 Subject: Change inline hyper links in README to reference style I use Vim's new conceal feature while editing Markdown* to conceal link locations however Vim doesn't reflow physical lines spanning multiple screen lines which means lines that contains (long) hyper links become very ragged. This distracts (too much) from actually reading the text. * http://groups.google.com/group/vim_dev/browse_frm/thread/eb05308417b17a5b/ --- README.md | 68 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------- 1 file changed, 45 insertions(+), 23 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index dfcff98..d56dad2 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1,32 +1,32 @@ # Automated tag generation and syntax highlighting in Vim -[Vim](http://www.vim.org/) has long been my favorite text editor and combined with [Exuberant Ctags] [exuberant_ctags] it has the potential to provide most of what I expect from an [integrated development environment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment). Exuberant Ctags is the latest incarnation of a [family of computer programs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctags) that scan source code files to create an index of identifiers (tags) and where they are defined. Vim uses this index (a so-called tags file) to enable you to jump to the definition of any identifier using the [Control-]](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/tagsrch.html#CTRL-]) mapping. +[Vim] [vim] has long been my favorite text editor and combined with [Exuberant Ctags] [exctags] it has the potential to provide most of what I expect from an [integrated development environment] [ide]. Exuberant Ctags is the latest incarnation of a [family of computer programs] [ctags] that scan source code files to create an index of identifiers (tags) and where they are defined. Vim uses this index (a so-called tags file) to enable you to jump to the definition of any identifier using the [Control-]] [ctrl_mapping] mapping. -When you're familiar with integrated development environments you may recognize this feature as "Go-to definition". One advantage of the combination of Vim and Exuberant Ctags over integrated development environments is that Vim supports syntax highlighting for [over 500 file types](http://ftp.vim.org/vim/runtime/syntax/) (!) and Exuberant Ctags can generate tags for [over 40 file types](http://ctags.sourceforge.net/languages.html) as well... +When you're familiar with integrated development environments you may recognize this feature as "Go-to definition". One advantage of the combination of Vim and Exuberant Ctags over integrated development environments is that Vim supports syntax highlighting for [over 500 file types] [vim_fts] (!) and Exuberant Ctags can generate tags for [over 40 file types] [ctags_fts] as well... There's just one problem: You have to manually keep your tags files up-to-date and this turns out to be a royal pain in the ass! So I set out to write a Vim plug-in that would do this boring work for me. When I finished the plug-in's basic functionality (one automatic command and a call to [system()] [system] later) I became interested in dynamic syntax highlighting, so I added that as well to see if it would work -- surprisingly well I'm happy to report! ## Installation -Unzip the most recent [ZIP archive](http://peterodding.com/code/vim/downloads/easytags.zip) file inside your Vim profile directory (usually this is `~/.vim` on UNIX and `%USERPROFILE%\vimfiles` on Windows), restart Vim and execute the command `:helptags ~/.vim/doc` (use `:helptags ~\vimfiles\doc` instead on Windows). Now try it out: Edit any file type supported by Exuberant Ctags and within ten seconds the plug-in should create/update your tags file (`~/.vimtags` on UNIX, `~/_vimtags` on Windows) with the tags defined in the file you just edited! This means that whatever file you're editing in Vim (as long as it's on the local file system), tags will always be available by the time you need them! +Unzip the most recent [ZIP archive] [download] file inside your Vim profile directory (usually this is `~/.vim` on UNIX and `%USERPROFILE%\vimfiles` on Windows), restart Vim and execute the command `:helptags ~/.vim/doc` (use `:helptags ~\vimfiles\doc` instead on Windows). Now try it out: Edit any file type supported by Exuberant Ctags and within ten seconds the plug-in should create/update your tags file (`~/.vimtags` on UNIX, `~/_vimtags` on Windows) with the tags defined in the file you just edited! This means that whatever file you're editing in Vim (as long as it's on the local file system), tags will always be available by the time you need them! Additionally if the file you just opened is a C, C++, Objective-C, Java, Lua, Python, PHP, Ruby or Vim source file you should also notice that the function and type names defined in the file have been syntax highlighted. The `easytags.vim` plug-in is intended to work automatically once it's installed, but if you want to change how it works there are several options you can change and commands you can execute from your own mappings and/or automatic commands. These are all documented below. -Note that if the plug-in warns you `ctags` isn't installed you'll have to download it from its [homepage] [exuberant_ctags], or if you're running Debian/Ubuntu you can install it by executing the following shell command: +Note that if the plug-in warns you `ctags` isn't installed you'll have to download it from its [homepage] [exctags], or if you're running Debian/Ubuntu you can install it by executing the following shell command: $ sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags ### A note about Windows -On Windows the [system()] [system] function used by `easytags.vim` causes a command prompt window to pop up while Exuberant Ctags is executing. If this bothers you then you can install my [shell.vim](http://peterodding.com/code/vim/shell/) plug-in which includes a [DLL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic-link_library) that works around this issue. Once you've installed both plug-ins it should work out of the box! Please let me know if this doesn't work for you. +On Windows the [system()] [system] function used by `easytags.vim` causes a command prompt window to pop up while Exuberant Ctags is executing. If this bothers you then you can install my [shell.vim] [shell] plug-in which includes a [DLL] [dll] that works around this issue. Once you've installed both plug-ins it should work out of the box! Please let me know if this doesn't work for you. ## Commands ### The `:UpdateTags` command -This command executes [Exuberant Ctags] [exuberant_ctags] from inside Vim to update the global tags file defined by `g:easytags_file`. When no arguments are given the tags for the current file are updated, otherwise the arguments are passed on to `ctags`. For example when you execute the Vim command `:UpdateTags -R ~/.vim` (or `:UpdateTags -R ~\vimfiles` on Windows) the plug-in will execute `ctags -R ~/.vim` for you (with some additional arguments, see the troubleshooting section "`:HighlightTags` only works for the tags file created by `:UpdateTags`" for more information). +This command executes [Exuberant Ctags] [exctags] from inside Vim to update the global tags file defined by `g:easytags_file`. When no arguments are given the tags for the current file are updated, otherwise the arguments are passed on to `ctags`. For example when you execute the Vim command `:UpdateTags -R ~/.vim` (or `:UpdateTags -R ~\vimfiles` on Windows) the plug-in will execute `ctags -R ~/.vim` for you (with some additional arguments, see the troubleshooting section "`:HighlightTags` only works for the tags file created by `:UpdateTags`" for more information). When you execute this command like `:UpdateTags!` (including the bang!) then all tags whose files are missing will be filtered from the global tags file. @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ Note that this command will be executed automatically every once in a while, ass ### The `:HighlightTags` command -When you execute this command while editing one of the supported file types (see above) the relevant tags in the current file are highlighted. The tags to highlight are gathered from all tags files known to Vim (through the ['tags' option](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#%27tags%27)). +When you execute this command while editing one of the supported file types (see above) the relevant tags in the current file are highlighted. The tags to highlight are gathered from all tags files known to Vim (through the ['tags' option] [tags_opt]). Note that this command will be executed automatically every once in a while, assuming you haven't changed `g:easytags_on_cursorhold`. @@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ You can enable this option so that the project specific tags files are written i :let g:easytags_dynamic_files = 1 -When you enable this option, the easytags plug-in will use the first filename returned by [tagfiles()](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/eval.html#tagfiles%28%29) as the tags file to write. Note that `tagfiles()` is reevaluated every time the plug-in runs. +When you enable this option, the easytags plug-in will use the first filename returned by [tagfiles()] [tagfiles_fun] as the tags file to write. Note that `tagfiles()` is reevaluated every time the plug-in runs. If you've also enabled `g:easytags_by_filetype` the project specific tags file must exist, even if it's empty; otherwise `g:easytags_by_filetype` will take precedence. @@ -88,13 +88,13 @@ Note that if you already have a global tags file you can create file type specif ### The `g:easytags_always_enabled` option -By default the plug-in automatically generates and highlights tags when you stop typing for a few seconds (this works using the [CursorHold](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/autocmd.html#CursorHold) automatic command). This means that when you edit a file, the dynamic highlighting won't appear until you pause for a moment. If you don't like this you can configure the plug-in to always enable dynamic highlighting: +By default the plug-in automatically generates and highlights tags when you stop typing for a few seconds (this works using the [CursorHold] [cursorhold] automatic command). This means that when you edit a file, the dynamic highlighting won't appear until you pause for a moment. If you don't like this you can configure the plug-in to always enable dynamic highlighting: :let g:easytags_always_enabled = 1 Be warned that after setting this option you'll probably notice why it's disabled by default: Every time you edit a file in Vim, the plug-in will first run Exuberant Ctags and then highlight the tags, and this slows Vim down quite a lot. I have some ideas on how to improve this latency by running Exuberant Ctags in the background so stay tuned! -Note: If you change this option it won't apply until you restart Vim, so you'll have to set this option in your [vimrc script][vimrc]. +Note: If you change this option it won't apply until you restart Vim, so you'll have to set this option in your [vimrc script] [vimrc]. ### The `g:easytags_on_cursorhold` option @@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ As I explained above the plug-in by default doesn't update or highlight your tag :let g:easytags_on_cursorhold = 0 -Note: Like the `g:easytags_always_enabled` option, if you change this option it won't apply until you restart Vim, so you'll have to set this option in your [vimrc script][vimrc]. +Note: Like the `g:easytags_always_enabled` option, if you change this option it won't apply until you restart Vim, so you'll have to set this option in your [vimrc script] [vimrc]. ### The `g:easytags_auto_update` option @@ -122,17 +122,17 @@ When the `:UpdateTags` command is executed automatically or without arguments, i :let g:easytags_autorecurse = 1 -You have to explicitly enable this option because it should only be used while navigating around small directory trees. Imagine always having this option enabled and then having to edit a file in e.g. the root of your home directory: The `easytags.vim` plug-in would freeze Vim for a long time while you'd have to wait for Exuberant Cags to scan thousands of files... +You have to explicitly enable this option because it should only be used while navigating around small directory trees. Imagine always having this option enabled and then having to edit a file in e.g. the root of your home directory: The `easytags.vim` plug-in would freeze Vim for a long time while you'd have to wait for Exuberant Ctags to scan thousands of files... Note that when you enable this option the `easytags.vim` plug-in might ignore other options like `g:easytags_resolve_links`. This is an implementation detail which I intend to fix. ### The `g:easytags_include_members` option -Exuberant Ctags knows how to generate tags for struct/class members in C++ and Java source code but doesn't do so by default because it can more than double the size of your tags files, thus taking much longer to read/write the tags file. When you enable the `g:easytags_include_members` option from your [vimrc script][vimrc] (before the `easytags.vim` plug-in is loaded): +Exuberant Ctags knows how to generate tags for struct/class members in C++ and Java source code but doesn't do so by default because it can more than double the size of your tags files, thus taking much longer to read/write the tags file. When you enable the `g:easytags_include_members` option from your [vimrc script] [vimrc] (before the `easytags.vim` plug-in is loaded): :let g:easytags_include_members = 1 -Exuberant Ctags will be instructed to include struct/class members using the `--extra=+q` command line argument and the `easytags.vim` plug-in will highlight them using the `cMember` highlighting group. Because most color schemes don't distinguish the [Identifier and Type](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/syntax.html#group-name) highlighting groups all members will now probably look like type definitions. You can change that by executing either of the following Vim commands (from your vimrc script, a file type plug-in, etc.): +Exuberant Ctags will be instructed to include struct/class members using the `--extra=+q` command line argument and the `easytags.vim` plug-in will highlight them using the `cMember` highlighting group. Because most color schemes don't distinguish the [Identifier and Type] [syn_groups] highlighting groups all members will now probably look like type definitions. You can change that by executing either of the following Vim commands (from your vimrc script, a file type plug-in, etc.): " If you like one of the existing styles you can link them: highlight link cMember Special @@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ Exuberant Ctags will be instructed to include struct/class members using the `-- ### The `g:easytags_resolve_links` option -UNIX has [symbolic links](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link) and [hard links](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link), both of which conflict with the concept of having one unique location for every identifier. With regards to hard links there's not much anyone can do, but because I use symbolic links quite a lot I've added this option. It's disabled by default since it has a small performance impact and might not do what unknowing users expect it to: When you enable this option the plug-in will resolve symbolic links in pathnames, which means your tags file will only contain entries with [canonical pathnames](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonicalization). To enable this option (which I strongly suggest doing when you run UNIX and use symbolic links) execute the following Vim command: +UNIX has [symbolic links] [slinks] and [hard links] [hlinks], both of which conflict with the concept of having one unique location for every identifier. With regards to hard links there's not much anyone can do, but because I use symbolic links quite a lot I've added this option. It's disabled by default since it has a small performance impact and might not do what unknowing users expect it to: When you enable this option the plug-in will resolve symbolic links in pathnames, which means your tags file will only contain entries with [canonical pathnames] [canon]. To enable this option (which I strongly suggest doing when you run UNIX and use symbolic links) execute the following Vim command: :let g:easytags_resolve_links = 1 @@ -211,7 +211,7 @@ If this doesn't print the location where you installed Exuberant Ctags it means ### Vim locks up while the plug-in is running -Once or twice now in several years I've experienced Exuberant Ctags getting into an infinite loop when given garbage input. In my case this happened by accident a few days ago :-|. Because my plug-in executes `ctags` in the foreground this will block Vim indefinitely! If this happens you might be able to kill `ctags` by pressing [Control-C](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#CTRL-C) but if that doesn't work you can also kill it without stopping Vim using a task manager or the `pkill` command (available on most UNIX systems): +Once or twice now in several years I've experienced Exuberant Ctags getting into an infinite loop when given garbage input. In my case this happened by accident a few days ago :-|. Because my plug-in executes `ctags` in the foreground this will block Vim indefinitely! If this happens you might be able to kill `ctags` by pressing [Control-C] [ctrl_c] but if that doesn't work you can also kill it without stopping Vim using a task manager or the `pkill` command (available on most UNIX systems): $ pkill -KILL ctags @@ -219,25 +219,25 @@ If Vim seems very slow and you suspect this plug-in might be the one to blame, i :set vbs=1 -Every time the plug-in executes it will time how long the execution takes and add the results to Vim's message history, which you can view by executing the [:messages](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/message.html#:messages) command. +Every time the plug-in executes it will time how long the execution takes and add the results to Vim's message history, which you can view by executing the [:messages] [messages] command. ### Failed to highlight tags because pattern is too big! -If the `easytags.vim` plug-in fails to highlight your tags and the error message mentions that the pattern is too big, your tags file has grown too large for Vim to be able to highlight all tagged identifiers! I've had this happen to me with 50 KB patterns because I added most of the headers in `/usr/include/` to my tags file. Internally Vim raises the error [E339: Pattern too long](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/message.html#E339) and unfortunately the only way to avoid this problem once it occurs is to reduce the number of tagged identifiers... +If the `easytags.vim` plug-in fails to highlight your tags and the error message mentions that the pattern is too big, your tags file has grown too large for Vim to be able to highlight all tagged identifiers! I've had this happen to me with 50 KB patterns because I added most of the headers in `/usr/include/` to my tags file. Internally Vim raises the error [E339: Pattern too long] [e339] and unfortunately the only way to avoid this problem once it occurs is to reduce the number of tagged identifiers... -In my case the solution was to move most of the tags from `/usr/include/` over to project specific tags files which are automatically loaded by Vim when I edit files in different projects because I've set the ['tags' option](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#%27tags%27) as follows: +In my case the solution was to move most of the tags from `/usr/include/` over to project specific tags files which are automatically loaded by Vim when I edit files in different projects because I've set the ['tags' option] ['tags'] as follows: :set tags=./.tags;,~/.vimtags Once you've executed the above command, Vim will automatically look for a file named `.tags` in the directory of the current file. Because of the `;` Vim also recurses upwards so that you can nest files arbitrarily deep under your project directories. -### The plug-in doesn't seem to work in [Cygwin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin) +### The plug-in doesn't seem to work in Cygwin -If you want to use the plug-in with Vim under Cygwin, you need to have the Cygwin version of Ctags installed instead of the Windows version (thanks to Alex Zuroff for reporting this!). +If you want to use the plug-in with Vim under [Cygwin] [cygwin], you need to have the Cygwin version of Ctags installed instead of the Windows version (thanks to Alex Zuroff for reporting this!). ## Contact -If you have questions, bug reports, suggestions, etc. the author can be contacted at . The latest version is available at and . If you like this plug-in please vote for it on [Vim Online](http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3114). +If you have questions, bug reports, suggestions, etc. the author can be contacted at . The latest version is available at and . If you like this plug-in please vote for it on [Vim Online] [vim_online]. ## License @@ -245,6 +245,28 @@ This software is licensed under the [MIT license](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M © 2011 Peter Odding <>. -[exuberant_ctags]: http://ctags.sourceforge.net/ +[canon]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonicalization +[ctags]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctags +[ctags_fts]: http://ctags.sourceforge.net/languages.html +[ctrl_c]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#CTRL-C +[ctrl_mapping]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/tagsrch.html#CTRL-] +[cursorhold]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/autocmd.html#CursorHold +[cygwin]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin +[dll]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic-link_library +[download]: http://peterodding.com/code/vim/downloads/easytags.zip +[e339]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/message.html#E339 +[exctags]: http://ctags.sourceforge.net/ +[hlinks]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link +[ide]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment +[messages]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/message.html#:messages +[shell]: http://peterodding.com/code/vim/shell/ +[slinks]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link +[syn_groups]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/syntax.html#group-name [system]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/eval.html#system%28%29 +[tagfiles_fun]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/eval.html#tagfiles%28%29 +[tags_opt]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#%27tags%27 +[unlet]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/eval.html#:unlet +[vim]: http://www.vim.org/ +[vim_fts]: http://ftp.vim.org/vim/runtime/syntax/ +[vim_online]: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3114 [vimrc]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/starting.html#vimrc -- cgit v1.2.3