wrap a long line with specific format

Question

I have a problem with breaking long line in markdown file. Given the following line

* "fo" : You can use the 'formatoptions' option to influence how Vim formats text. 'formatoptions' is a string that can contain any of the letters below. The default setting is "tcq".

runing gq$ will end up with

* "fo" : You can use the 'formatoptions' option to influence how Vim formats
* text. 'formatoptions' is a string that can contain any of the letters below.
* The default setting is "tcq". 

where the two new * below are definitely extra and erroneous. Ideally, I'd like to set my option or remap my gq$ to produce the following formatted text

* "fo" : You can use the 'formatoptions' option to influence how Vim formats
         text. 'formatoptions' is a string that can contain any of the letters
         below. The default setting is "tcq". 

If that is not easy to do, at least the two extra * should be gone and produces

* "fo" : You can use the 'formatoptions' option to influence how Vim formats
  text. 'formatoptions' is a string that can contain any of the letters below.
  The default setting is "tcq".

How can I remap to achieve the desired formatted text?

By the way, is there a quick way to gq pasted text?

Answer 1

The behavior you're seeing is triggered by plug-in plasticboy/vim-markdown, which is installing an indent plug-in which sets:

setlocal comments+=b:*,b:+,b:-

This lacks the f flag on the * bullets, which means it will repeat them on every line of a formatted block.

It looks like you can control this formatting by setting the vim_markdown_auto_insert_bullets variable. Setting it to 0 will remove that part of the variable definition. So perhaps try this in your vimrc?

let g:vim_markdown_auto_insert_bullets = 0

But that means you won't get a * at all in 'comments', so that won't indent the lines after the first one when the first includes a *.

Vim does ship with default settings for markdown and those include fb:* in 'comments'. Looking at the source repo for it, it looks like it has done so for the last 10 years. So maybe consider dropping the extra plug-in and see if what you get by default from Vim isn't closer to what you actually wanted in first place?

It's possible that the plug-in does bring some behavior you wanted, in which case maybe open a issue with the plug-in's GitHub page about this behavior? That might potentially help get it addressed with the plug-in you would like to use.

Answer 2

Your 'formatoptions' include q, it allow gq to format comments.

Your 'comments' include b:* (b is format rule,* is literal pattern), your line starts with a space and *, vim see it as as comment.

vim use b rule of format-comments to format it:

  b Blank (<Space>, <Tab> or <EOL>) required after {string}.

That's why all your lines are prefixed with *.

Format your line as a numbered list

If you want to align indent after :, you can use n rule of 'formatoptions' to format it as numered list. vim use 'formatlistpat' to decide whether current line is a numbered list. It's default value for markdown in vim8.2.677 is:

setlocal formatlistpat?
--------
formatlistpat=^\s*\d\+\.\s\+\|^[-*+]\s\+\|^\[^\ze[^\]]\+\]:

There is space before your *, it doesn't qualified as a numbered list. To fix it, you can add this to you after/ftplugin/markdown.vim:

" disable comment format
setlocal formatoptions-=q

" enable numbered list format
setlocal formatoptions+=n

" add your special list pattern
let &l:formatlistpat .= '\|^ \{,3\}[-*+][^:]\+:\s*'

result of gq:

 * "fo" : You can use the 'formatoptions' option to influence how Vim formats
          text. 'formatoptions' is a string that can contain any of the letters
          below.  The default setting is "tcq". 

Format your line as comment

This won't work for your special List, this is default behavior, it's used for common List.

It might sounds weird, but vim format List as comment, 'comments' on my machine for markdown defaults to:

setlocal comments?
--------
  comments=fb:*,fb:-,fb:+,n:>

The f rule is the key:

  f Only the first line has the comment string.  Do not repeat comment on
    the next line, but preserve indentation (e.g., a bullet-list).

result of gq:

 * "fo" : You can use the 'formatoptions' option to influence how Vim formats
   text. 'formatoptions' is a string that can contain any of the letters below.
   The default setting is "tcq". 

Answer 3

After some workaround, the following mapping can give me the desired : aligned gq format

 inoremap jj <Esc>
 nnoremap <silent> gQ :exe "normal ^dmcmcvt:yvt:r\<Space>i\<Space>\<Space>jjgq$g'cdmc0vt:P"<Bar><CR>

in which I first use a mark c to remember the location of the * symbol, do the usual gq formatting and then go back to restore the content which has been cut from * to :. I have to use a mapping inoremap jj <Esc>, which is annoying, because replacing jj with \<Esc> or <Esc> does not work, at least for me!

For the normal expected result without extra *, as pointed by @filbranden, it is due to the default behavior of the plasticboy/vim-markdown. And it can be restored by setting let g:vim_markdown_auto_insert_bullets = 0 (setting let g:vim_markdown_new_list_item_indent = 0 at the same time is also recommended). My own tweak that does the same job is

nnoremap <silent> gq<CR> :exe "normal ^dmcmcvyvr\<Space>gq$g'cdmchhPlx"<Bar><CR>

In the same vein, mapping to auto format pasted text can be created.

---

After adopting several tips by @filbranden, the following maps works perfectly for me (gQ for : aligned, the other one for normal alignment but with visually-appealing amount of spaces as shown in my question post)

nnoremap <silent> gQ :exe "normal! ^vt:yvt:r\<Space>i\<Space>\<Space>\<lt>Esc>gq$g`[hvt:P"<CR>
nnoremap <silent> gq<CR> :exe "normal ^vyvr\<Space>gq$g`[Plx"<CR>