vim-syncopate

When we share code, it should be as readable as possible, i.e.:

• Syntax highlighted.
• Using a monospaced font.

It should also be frictionless: fiddling with tools detracts from the flow state.

Vim makes it easy to export part or all of your buffer, including syntax highlighting. The :TOhtml command generates an HTML version of your buffer’s contents. You can copy it from a browser tab, and paste it into any HTML-aware editor (such as a Gmail message, a Google Doc, or a Google Groups post). The syntax highlighting comes along for the ride!

Vim makes this easy… but not easy enough.

• You need to save the HTML file and open it in a browser.
• You need to select the text from the browser tab and copy it.
• You also need to delete the HTML file when you’re done, so you don’t litter your directories!

Enter syncopate.

syncopate stands for syntax copy-paste. It’s all the convenience of :TOhtml, but none of the friction.

First, select some code (or don’t, if you want the whole buffer). Then call the :SyncopateExportToClipboard command. Syncopate will:

1. Change to the default colorscheme (which tends to look better on white backgrounds).
2. Populate the clipboard with the (syntax-highlighted!) contents of your buffer.
3. Restore your colorscheme settings.

It gets even more frictionless if you enable mappings. Let’s say your <Leader> is ,. Then ,<> (mnemonic: think of HTML tags) will export the entire file.

Better yet, syncopate works with vim’s text objects to make it a breeze to grab just the area you want. That’s right: ,<ip exports the current paragraph!

Easy to configure

There are two main ways to configure syncopate.

Generic :TOhtml options

See :help :TOhtml and just start scrolling; the options (e.g., g:html_no_progress) are listed below.

syncopate-specific

Syncopate is a maktaba plugin, so it’s easy to configure it with Glaive.

:help syncopate-configure gives a list of all the options. Here are a few examples.

• change_colorscheme: Set this to false to keep your current colorscheme, and export exactly what you see. (This is true by default because the default colorscheme works better on the white-ish backgrounds one commonly encounters in practice.)
• clear_bg: Setting this will output a transparent background. Useful when your colorscheme almost-but-not-quite matches the background of your slides—or especially if those slides have a color gradient!

So if you wanted to export your current colorscheme, except with a transparent background, you might use a line like this:

Glaive syncopate !change_colorscheme clear_bg

This works in your .vimrc, or—with tab-completion!—on the fly in a live vim session.

So, what’s missing?

Mac and Windows support.

Contributions welcome!