Enhance Latex Syntax without Rewriting everything

Question

I want to extend the latex syntax for the given file:

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{book}
\begin{document}
    \begin{figure}[t]
      \begin{tikzpicture}
        \node[alter] at (0,0) (v1) {typ0}; 
      \end{tikzpicture}
    \end{figure}
\end{document}

Right now, the name 'v1' gets spell-checked. I want to remove spell checking for it. Thus, I tried adding several commands to the .vim/ftplugin/tex_mappings.vim file. However, everything I can come up would require me to add a lot more additional rules than I want to. E.g. the line

syn region texRefZone       matchgroup=texStatement start="\\node" end=";\|%stopzone\>"

stops spell checking, but highlights everything from '[' to ';' in the 'Reference' color, which I don't want, plus it also disables spell checking for the stuff inside the curly brackets (typ0), but I want (the default) spell checking there. What is a nice way to disable spell checking for 'v1' without messing up everything else on this line? Thanks!

I run Arch Linux and vim version 'version 8.2.1704'. My .vimrc is

syntax enable
let g:tex_flavor = 'latex'

Answer 1

To extend the syntax for the tex filetype, you should specify your customizations in ~/.vim/after/syntax/tex.vim (or .config/nvim/after/syntax/tex.vim for neovim).

The rules that you are looking for are quite complex, because they need to define nested regions. You would need to add the contains= keyword, something like this:

syntax region texRefZone
      \ matchgroup=texStatement
      \ start="\\node\>" end=";\|%stopzone\>"
      \ contains=@NoSpell,...

---

I'm currently working on a major PR for vimtex where I fully adopt syntax highlighting as an native feature. vimtex already has some minor improved support for Tikz pictures. When the PR is merged, I would be willing to consider adding more advanced support for the type of commands you're interested in; feel free to open a new issue/feature request.