Highlighters

TOC

• Highlighters
• Volatile highlighting
• Search highlighting
• Highlight a column
• FIXME/TODO/XXX keywords in comments
• Faces

Highlighters

Syntax highlighting is supported through highlighters. You may add your own Syntax definitions in the rc directory. There is a syntax highlighting section in the highlighters.asciidoc file.

Examples

column, line

# same ideas apply to `line`
addhl column 4 red           # all chars in column 4 will be have a red color
addhl column 5 red,blue+b    # all chars in column 5 will be red on blue and in bold
addhl column 6 PrimaryCursor # all chars in column 6 will be the same face than `PrimaryCursor` (see below)

ranges

decl range-specs foo '1:3.1,3.4|red' # declare an option called foo, of type range-specs
addhl ranges foo                     # use this option as the parameter
set buffer foo '2:3.1,3.10|blue'     # update the option to trigger changes

Volatile highlighting

Extensions

volatile-highlighting

Highlight on yank, delete, change and paste commands. The highlight disappears at the next command. The highlighting gives useful visual feedback for what your operation actually changed in the buffer.

Search highlighting

First add a search face. Here, it will emphasis the searched word in bold and italic without changing the foreground or background colors:

face search +bi

Then enable search highlighting. Dynregex is plugged on the content of the search register /:

add-highlighter dynregex '%reg{/}' 0:search

Smart search highlighting

Extensions

search-highlighting

A smart search highlighter, enabled in context of search.

Highlight a column

If you want a visual hint about code that exceeds a given width, try the column highlighter:

add-highlighter global/ column '%opt{autowrap_column}' default,red

...highlights the column named by the autowrap_column option with a red background, and will automatically move as the option is updated. The autowrap_column option is used by the autowrap script what column to wrap to, but even if you don't use autowrap's functionality, it's a good place to record the buffer's wrapping column so other wrapping and formatting hooks can find it.

FIXME/TODO/XXX keywords in comments

Source the following script in your kakrc: gdt.kak. It will display the word "FIXME"/"TODO"/"XXX" in bold and inverted video whenever it is written in a comment, to highlight bits of code that still need modification.

Faces

Faces can be taken from the colorscheme files, which is what is usually done, or directly from the the list of default faces:

Name, Foreground, Background

• Default, Default, Default,
• PrimarySelection, White, Blue,
• SecondarySelection, Black, Blue,
• PrimaryCursor, Black, White,
• SecondaryCursor, Black, White,
• LineNumbers, Default, Default,
• LineNumberCursor, Default, Default, Reverse,
• MenuForeground, White, Blue,
• MenuBackground, Blue, White,
• MenuInfo, Cyan, Default,
• Information, Black, Yellow,
• Error, Black, Red,
• StatusLine, Cyan, Default,
• StatusLineMode, Yellow, Default,
• StatusLineInfo, Blue, Default,
• StatusLineValue, Green, Default,
• StatusCursor, Black, Cyan,
• Prompt, Yellow, Default,
• MatchingChar, Default, Default, Bold,
• BufferPadding, Blue, Default,
• Whitespace, Default, Default,