stackoverflow syntax highlighting in vim

Question

Today i woke up with a simple idea.

It would great to have "stackoverflow synthax highlighting in vim".

Do you know a simple way to go SO style ?

do you mean the syntax HL used in SO code block? it depends on the language detection. — Kent, Feb 25 '14 at 11:24
Do you want the colors used by StackOverflow to render code blocks or do you want the syntax highlighting rules? — romainl, Feb 25 '14 at 11:38

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 25 '14 at 11:19

Stack Overflow uses Markdown syntax, so this should do it (in Vim versions 7.3+, which ship with it):

:setf markdown

as separate filetype

If you want to do customizations, it's best to define your own custom stackoverflow filetype by creating a file ~/.vim/syntax/stackoverflow.vim with the following contents (and defining corresponding filetype detection rules):

" Quit when a syntax file was already loaded.
if exists('b:current_syntax') | finish | endif

runtime! syntax/markdown.vim syntax/markdown/*.vim

filetype setting from browser

Since Stack Overflow is browser-based, you probably use a browser plugin to do the editing in Vim. I've described such a setup that can automatically set the filetype based on the currently edited URL for Firefox in my blog post Pentadactyl set filetype in external Vim editor based on URL.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 25 '14 at 11:27

Your question is fuzzy; if you mean to mark certain blocks as having a certain syntax (which on Stack Overflow can be done with language: lang-js HTML comments), my SyntaxRange plugin enables you to define a different filetype syntax on regions of a buffer, either manually or automatically based on markers.

stackoverflow syntax highlighting in vim

2 Answers2

as separate filetype

filetype setting from browser