2

Currently, I use this:

map <F7> <Esc>:if has("gui_running")<Bar>hi comment gui=bold<Bar>else<Bar>hi comment cterm=bold<Bar>endif<LF>

It turns comments bold in terminal or in GUI when I press <F7>.

And I would like it also to toggle the bold text. Is there a way to do this?

Something like:

if hi comment gui == bold
    hi comment gui=none
else
    hi comment gui=bold
endif
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  • Note you can just use :hi comment gui=bold cterm=bold, no need for the if statement here. – Martin Tournoij♦ Jun 28 '15 at 0:03
5

You can get the current settings of a highlight group with the :highlight command. For example:

:highlight Comment
Comment        xxx term=bold ctermfg=4 guifg=Blue

This will just output the text; there is (as far as I know), no VimScript function to get the same text in a string, but not all is lost, since we can use the :redir command to redirect the output of a command to a variable.

We can then match this, and call the appropriate :highlight command.

Putting that all together, we end up with this function:

fun! ToggleHighlight()
    " Redirect output of :highlight to l:current
    redir => l:current
        silent highlight Comment
    redir END

    if l:current =~# '\(cterm\|gui\)=bold'
        highlight Comment gui=none cterm=none
    else
        highlight Comment gui=none cterm=bold
    endif
endfun

And you can map this function to <F7> with:

noremap <F7> <Esc>:call ToggleComments()<CR>
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  • Ah, I figured there would be some way of getting the state of the cterm or gui attributes. – EvergreenTree Jun 28 '15 at 0:35
  • Nice! Thanks. But I think nomap is wrong. Can you correct it please? I dont know which map command I would want to use here. – MichalH Jun 28 '15 at 0:37
  • @Mike Oops, sorry, I meant to use noremap, which is the same as map but non-recursive. See Learn VimScript the Hard way chapters 3 through 5 (especially chapter 5) to learn why you should always use noremap and never map. – Martin Tournoij♦ Jun 28 '15 at 0:46
  • You can use :echo synIDattr(synIDtrans(hlID('Comment')), 'bold', 'gui') to check for bold mode for gui. See the help at :h synIDattr for all the arguments. – Christian Brabandt Sep 3 '15 at 9:24
3

This mapping is probably more suited to a mapping which calls a function, since it contains so many commands. Here is my best shot at this:

" This just uses the call command to run the ToggleBoldComments function
nnoremap <F7> :call ToggleBoldComments()<CR>

function! ToggleBoldComments()
    " Make a variable in the current buffer to keep track of whether the
    " comments are bold or not.
    if !exists("g:comments_bold")
        let g:comments_bold = 0
    endif

    " If comments aren't already bold, make it so.
    if g:comments_bold == 0
        let g:comments_bold = 1
        hi comment gui=bold cterm=bold
        return 0
    elseif g:comments_bold == 1
        " Same, except the other way around.
        let g:comments_bold = 0
        hi comment gui=none cterm=none
    endif
endfunction

Here are the relevant help topics (I recommend you read these if you want to know more about how this mapping works):

  • :help :function
  • :help :call
  • :help exists()
  • :help g:
  • :help internal-variables
  • :help :highlight
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