SpecialComment in vim

Question

When I open vim, the ~ representing no lines are highlighted according to SpecialComment. So too are the characters in 'listchars' (e.g, :set list lcs=tab:\|\).

How can I insert text that is highlighted as SpecialComment on my own?

I want to make plugin that puts "special comments": for example, create a box comment in any language:

-----------------
|print('hello') |
-----------------

or

----------------------
|printf("hello word")|
----------------------

But I would like the highlighting to use SpecialComment

SpecialComment colors only appear in vim. Is it possible to insert special comment text with the keyboard?

Answer 1

Background (added 10/2019): when I originally saw this I considered two possible interpretations of your (OP's) request. First, I thought you might be under the impression that syntax highlighting works in a similar fashion as Bash text coloring, i.e. escape codes or equivalent are inserted in plain text and they dictate coloring and formatting for displayed text (escape codes are hidden in display contexts). This is not how Vim works. No directives or meta text exist. It's a (regex) pattern driven system.

My alternate interpretation was that you want to deliberately type text that will be displayed with a particular highlighting (such as SpecialComment). That's what the original answer covers...

It depends. Highlighting is applied based on the current set of syntax highlighting rules. The current rules are dictated (usually) by the type of file we're editing. You can't open a random file and just know how to enter text "with keyboard" that will get highlighted with SpecialComment coloring. You must be familiar with the rules for the current file type.

For example, if I open a file with extension .java I know one way to see SpecialComment highlighting is to enter the first line of text in a javadoc comment:

/**
 * This text is highlighted as a SpecialComment
 *
 * This text is not.
 */
public void foo() {
...

The rules are stored in files under $VIMRUNTIME/syntax. For the example above it would be java.vim where you'll find:

hi def link javaCommentTitle        SpecialComment

syn region  javaCommentTitle    contained matchgroup=javaDocComment start="/\*\*"   matchgroup=javaCommentTitle keepend end="\.$" end="\.[ \t\r<&]"me=e-1 end="[^{]@"me=s-2,he=s-1 end="\*/"me=s-1,he=s-1 contains=@javaHtml,javaCommentStar,javaTodo,@Spell,javaDocTags,javaDocSeeTag