I want to create a highlighting group named Italic
to be exactly like
Normal
but with text in italic. Currently, my Normal
highlighting
is set to
ctermfg=251 ctermbg=234 guifg=#cccccc guibg=#242424
My questions are:
Is adding term=italic
to the Normal
attributes the right way
to do that?
:hi Italic term=italic ctermfg=251 ctermbg=234 guifg=#cccccc guibg=#242424
Is it possible to do that in a generic fashion, i.e., define the new highlighting group to match the style of the base one for any color scheme (the above does only for my current color scheme)? Something like
:hi Italic extends Normal term=italic
To solve this issue you can create the highlighting group by script. The function below takes three string arguments: the name of the group to base highlighting on, the name of the group to create, and a string containing highlighting attributes to add or overwrite.
func! ExtendHighlight(base, new, extra)
redir => attrs | sil! exec 'highlight' a:base | redir END
let attrs = substitute(split(attrs, '\n')[0], '^\S\+\s\+xxx\s*', '', '')
sil exec 'highlight' a:new attrs a:extra
endfunc
Thus, the call
:call ExtendHighlight('Normal', 'Italic', 'term=italic')
creates a new group called Italic
that extends Normal
highlighting
by the term=italic
attribute string.
Note that custom highlighting groups remain unchanged on color scheme switching. To correct this behavior you can update the group when the current color scheme changes:
:autocmd ColorScheme * call ExtendHighlight('Normal', 'Italic', 'term=italic')