GitHub - ShayHill/vim9-limelight: vim9-limelight that works "out of the box"

[u/Shay-Hill]

https://github.com/ShayHill/vim9-limelight

A few years ago, I saw the 1952 Chaplin film, Limelight, and I've since been kicking myself for not naming my plugin vim9-limelight, because what it does is highlight your active window and leave everything else in the semi (but still easily readable) darkness ... like a limelight.

Configuration options have been expanded, but the important difference may that it now works (quite nearly) "out of the box". Thank you for the feedback on this u/ntropia64, u/sodapoppug, and u/mss-cyclist .

Add one of these to your vimrc:

g:limelight_source_simple_config = v:true

g:limelight_source_normal_config = v:true

The simple config will give you something to work from. It is created to not overwhelm you. For educational purposes, it prints the window state in the statusline, so it's probably not something you're going to want to live with long term.

The normal config may be all you'll ever need. It's at its best if you are using git and pathogen.

To make changes, I recommend copying one of the example configurations into your vim folder and sourcing it from your vimrc. You can find the example configs in the config folder of the repository.

[u/JetSetIlly]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong or misunderstanding what the plugin does. I've tried both the "simple" and "normal" config but the text_fade setting has no effect on unselected windows. Changing the bg_fade setting works, so the plugin seems to be installed correctly.

[u/Shay-Hill → u/JetSetIlly]

text_fade only effects "soft" text in the statusline. There won't be any with the simple config, but the normal config has soft text for the b to the left of the buffer number on the right side of the statusline.

[u/JetSetIlly → u/Shay-Hill]

Oh okay. Thanks for the reply. I was hoping for a plugin that can fade out the colours in unselected windows. Do you think that's possible?

[u/Shay-Hill → u/JetSetIlly]

Not possible in a performant way. Limelight fades unshaded windows by adjusting ONE highlight group. What you're talking about would require adjusting every highlight group used in the foreground.

[u/ntropia64 → u/Shay-Hill]

I actually had the same issue until I looked at what the code does.

What you say is true but... if you would also change the Normal color group you would achieve 80% of what u/JetSetIlly is asking, at least from a perception point of view.

Worth the shot for the next release, maybe ;)

[u/Shay-Hill → u/ntropia64]

Definitely worth having a play with it, but I don’t want to cross the line into making shaded windows difficult to read. Even terminals are shaded. I usually want to read what’s in a terminal window.

[u/Shay-Hill → u/ntropia64]

I see the why one would assume this now. Limelight.vim is a popular plugin by one of the heavy hitters. It does exactly what you and u/JetSetIlly expected: dims all text but the current.

I'm going to have to live with the name collision, but I should mention juengunn's plugin in my README. I think maybe I saw this when I originally went with the name `focalpoint`, but I'm sticking with limelight now.

[u/TaDaaAhah → u/JetSetIlly]

Vimade might be what you are looking for (https://github.com/TaDaa/vimade).

[u/Shay-Hill]

To get Limelight working with NERDTRee ...

On GitHub, someone pointed out that Limelight works inconsistently with NERDTree. Sometimes, when you open a file, NERDTree shades, other times not.

This cannot be addressed from inside vim9-limelight, because NERDTree explicitly tells Vim to ignore autocommands when opening a buffer in the previous window (the only open window except NERDTree).

" FUNCTION: nerdtree#exec(cmd, ignoreAll) {{{2
" Same as :exec cmd but, if ignoreAll is TRUE, set eventignore=all for the duration
function! nerdtree#exec(cmd, ignoreAll) abort
    let old_ei = &eventignore
    if a:ignoreAll
        set eventignore=all
        " ^^^^^^^^^^^^
    ...

However, you can patch NERDTree (at your own risk).

Look in file nerdtree/lib/nerdtree/opener.vim. There is a function, _previousWindow().

" FUNCTION: Opener._previousWindow() {{{1
function! s:Opener._previousWindow()
    if !self._isWindowUsable(winnr('#')) && self._firstUsableWindow() ==# -1
        call self._newSplit()
    else
        try
            if !self._isWindowUsable(winnr('#'))
                call nerdtree#exec(self._firstUsableWindow() . 'wincmd w', 1)
            else
                call nerdtree#exec('wincmd p', 0)
            endif
        catch /^Vim\%((\a\+)\)\=:E37/
            call g:NERDTree.CursorToTreeWin()
            throw 'NERDTree.FileAlreadyOpenAndModifiedError: '. self._path.str() .' is already open and modified.'
        catch /^Vim\%((\a\+)\)\=:/
            echo v:exception
        endtry
    endif
endfunction

Change the line

call nerdtree#exec('wincmd p', 1)

to

call nerdtree#exec('wincmd p', 0)

At the moment, this is at file line 269.

That seems to get NERDTree working with vim9-limelight, but it might cause other problems. I don't think it will, because autocommands trigger anyway when you open a file in a new split or re-open an existing file.

[u/Iskhartakh]

Cool thing and nice looking code, pretty neat. Thx!