[Request] Clean View

[odabrunz]

This is a request for the "clean view" as in emacs' org-mode. As described on the org-mode mailing list, only the last star before each heading is shown:

* Top level headline
  * Second level
    * 3rd level
      some text
    * 3rd level
      more text
* Another top level headline

While vim could probably do something similar with concealed characters, VimOrganizer already uses the 'conceal' feature to implement hiding of URLs. As there is only one global 'conceallevel', the "clean view" cannot replace concealed chars with spaces while the URL hiding mode is set to completely remove these chars.

I remember reading that you thought about implementing something akin to "clean view" by using headings with leading spaces in the org file, but that emacs org-mode does not support such a file format. I could not find that thread again, but IIRC Carsten Dominik said something to the effect that the leading stars are deeply entangled within org-mode's code.

My suggestion is to implement the "clean view" in VimOrganizer with leading spaces in the file anyway. This seems to be the only "clean" way to do this in vim. To preserve compatibility with emacs, this means another addition to the .emacs file is needed to convert such a file to the emacs org file format.

I am not sure how difficult it really is to change emacs' org-mode to accept such a "clean view" file format. After looking a bit into the code of emacs org-mode it seems it is still using outline-mode functions to match headings, but it sets specific outline-regexp and outline-level functions to use stars only (and to implement the tricks to get clean view working, such as org-odd-levels).

There may be corner cases to catch, but I am not yet convinced that it is too difficult to implement.

The only problem I see is that people may use org files that contain lists with '*' as an item marker. These become difficult (or impossible?) to distinguish from "clean view" headings.

Whatever can be done about this, I am not sure. But it may help to require a special #+STARTUP: cleanview line in the file to turn on recognition of clean view headings. Users of this file format need to make sure that their non-heading lines do not start with spaces and then a star.

[hsitz]

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Olaf Dabrunz [email protected]:

This is a request for the "clean view" as in emacs' org-mode. As described
on the org-mode mailing list, only the last star before each heading is
shown:

• Top level headline
  • Second level
    • 3rd level
      some text
    • 3rd level
      more text
• Another top level headline

Olaf --

VimOrganizer should already do this. There is a highlight group called
'Org_Star' that is applied to asterisk strings that begin lines, in which
all asterisks except the last in the string receive the highlighting.
Assigning this highlight group the same color as your background
effectively makes them invisible, with the result that you see the "clean
view".

Something like the statement below will make these initial asterisks
invisible, of course depending on the color of your background.

:highlight Org_Star guifg=[color of background] ctermfg=[color of
background]

The best thing to do would be to put it in the OrgCustomColors function in
your vimrc file:

function OrgCustomColors()
highlight Org_Star guifg=[color of background] ctermfg=[color of
background]
endfunction

You can also look at the help section :h vimorg-customizing-colors

Hope that helps,

Herb

[odabrunz]

Thanks for pointing me to this!

I have to admit that I did not yet look at a number of the highlights in OrgCustomColors(), including the Org_Star highlight, although I have copied the function from the _vimrc in the VimOrganizer package.

It worked, but it needed the change in syntax/org.vim from cbf351d, which is not yet in http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3342. I am still using the vim.org version -- should I switch to the git master?

Maybe the Org_Star highlight should get a special mention in the vimorg help file. It was a bit too easy to overlook.

I like that I could get the hiding to work relatively easily in a vim that runs in a terminal. emacs org-mode in a terminal "hides" the leading stars by using the default foreground color, which is very visible. Only in a GUI window the leading stars are really hidden. If I only knew more about font-lock I might get this to work in a terminal too, but it does not work out of the box.

Alas, I feel that there are a few things missing (some of them are already in emacs org-mode, as described in the "clean view" announcement (http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/22)), let me sum them up here:

1. Terminal (non-GUI) cursor disappears on hidden stars
   
   To hide the leading stars I use a foreground color very similar to the background color for Org_Star. The problem is that the terminal cursor in vim is rendered by using reverse video. This has little effect, as fg and bg color are so similar that the cursor remains invisible.
   
   The problem becomes really bad when using heading navigation, as this jumps to the first column (the first hidden star) in the target heading, which means that the cursor is always invisible after navigating.
   
   This is not a problem in the GUI (both in vim and in emacs). The cursor is rendered by changing the bg color between two high-contrast colors.
   
   No good idea how to solve this. (Maybe after all conceal mode can help? Or still leading spaces, instead of hiding stars? Oh well... -- Making this Org_Star highlight a "mode" of VimOrganizer may help: in that mode navigation could go to the last star of the heading, instead of the first star. The last star renders normally, and the cursor is visible. And this is also where I want the cursor to jump to in clean mode, as this is closer to the heading text.)
2. Support for the hidestars keyword
   
   ... in a #+STARTUP: line as in emacs org-mode would be great.
   
   Also, having a global config variable for this would be great.
3. Stars of sub-headings do not align with first text char of parent heading
   
   Emacs org-mode solves this by using only odd numbered heading levels when you ask it to (using the odd keyword in a #+STARTUP: line). Maybe this can be implemented in VimOrganizer as well (along with the org-convert-to-odd{,even}-levels functions)?
   • Top level headline
     • Second level
     • 3rd level
       some text
     • 3rd level
       more text
   • Another top level headline

If you would like to have some of these features (or some other solution), I could try to help implementing something (although I do not know that much about VimOrganizer internals yet, but I have done (mostly unreleased) patches to a number of other vim scripts and have programmed several larger (unreleased) vim scripts myself).

Thanks for the great work!

Olaf

[hsitz]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:15 AM, Olaf Dabrunz [email protected]:

It worked, but it needed the change in syntax/org.vim from cbf351dhttps://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer/commit/cbf351d,
which is not yet in http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3342.
I am still using the vim.org version -- should I switch to the git
master?

Yes, use the github master version.

Alas, I feel that there are a few things missing (some of them are already

in emacs org-mode, as described in the "clean view" announcement (
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/22)), let me sum them up
here:

All the points you raise are good ones. Unfortunately, the "clean view"
is mostly cosmetic issue and hasn't been requested by anyone else so it's
pretty low on priority scale. I'm not spending a lot of time on this
project and there are more pressing issues.

Regarding the issue with cursor highlighting in terminal vim, my guess is
that it wouldn't be worth the effort of trying to find a fix.

Support for 'hidestars' would be good, but realistically most Org users
either use clean view or they don't, they don't use it in some docs and not
in others, so just having them set Org_Star highlight should work fine,
even if not optimal.

Regarding odd numbers of stars: Yes, "clean view" in Org-mode has two
parts: 1) hiding leading stars and 2) indenting of headings that lines up
vertically. I had fooled around with system that used the equivalent of
Org's 'odd' stars. The code is in current VimOrganizer but not in any way
that exposes to users. If you want to switch your version to use "odd"
stars then you can change one of the assignments at the top of org.vim in
ftplugin directory. Around line 40 you will see this line:

let b:v.levelstars=1

To get "odd" star behavior change this to:

let b:v.levelstars=2

This will then start adding 2 stars for every level past level 1, with
effect similar to Org's.

There is also a function in org.vim that would allow changing a document's
status on the fly. That function is not exposed to the user, but if you
want to look at it the code is here (as well as in your org.vim file):

function! s:StarLevelFromTo(from, to)
let save_cursor = getpos(".")
set fdm=manual
let b:v.levelstars = a:to
ChangeSyn
g/^+/call
setline(line("."),substitute(getline(line(".")),'^+','' .
\ repeat('',(len(matchstr(getline(line(".")),'^*+')) -

1. * a:to / a:from),''))
   set fdm=expr
   call setpos(".",save_cursor)
   endfunction

Calling 's:StarLevelFromTo(1,2)' would change current doc from regular
stars to odd stars. Calling 's:StarLevelFromTo(2,1)' would convert an odd
starred document back to regular starring. I haven't touched this in a
long time, it was working bug-free, if I recall, a long time ago.

If you do use the odd star setup in VimOrganizer you would want to have
settings in the document header that set up clean view in Emacs. These
lines are not used in VimOrganizer, but Emacs would need them, e.g., if you
were to export document to Emacs/Org-mode for printing.

-- Herb

[hsitz]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Herbert Sitz [email protected] wrote:

If you do use the odd star setup in VimOrganizer you would want to have
settings in the document header that set up clean view in Emacs. These
lines are not used in VimOrganizer, but Emacs would need them, e.g., if you
were to export document to Emacs/Org-mode for printing.

Oh, I should also add that if you aren't using the "level dependent
highlight" patch for Vim in the contrib directory of VimOrganizer
download that you would probably want to recompile your Vim with that
patch. This allows folded headings in Vim to have different colors
depending on their level, i.e., makes fold colors like you get in
Emacs/Orgmode. These changes are helpful to visually keeping levels
straight in a way that's a little different from clean view, but, I
think, more essential.

-- Herb