Text rewrapping

Hi,

I have done quite some searching but didn't really find a solution, so I am posting here. Apologies if what I describe is a solved issue, after all, and I just didn't find it.

When I write LaTeX, I keep my lines limited to 80 characters, and I also like to start each sentence on a separate line. To maintain this structure when something changes, I am making extensive use of automatic rewrapping with gqis. That works fine, but it does not do what I want if the sentence contains an equation or other environment. Specifically, in a situation like

This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation environment,                                         
\begin{equation}                                                                     
 x = 1 \,,                                                                           
\end{equation}                                                                       
that should not be rewrapped.

I would like gqis on the first line to produce

This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation
environment,                                         
\begin{equation}                                                                     
 x = 1 \,,                                                                           
\end{equation}                                                                       
that should not be rewrapped.

but instead I get

This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation                              
environment, \begin{equation} x = 1 \,,                                              
\end{equation} that should not be rewrapped.     

Is there a way I can teach vim to recognize \begin{}...\end{} as sentence boundaries? And if so, could this be made part of vimtex?

Best,
Sebastian

[lervag]

See :help vimtex-nf-formatting, I've written a lot about this stuff there. You can use gw with let g:vimtex_format_enabled = 1 to get something similar to what you are asking for (see g:vimtex_format_enabled).

Thanks for the answer! Unfortunately, it does not work for me: I used let g:vimtex_format_enabled = 1, but the formatting still comes out not the way I want, no matter whether I use gw or gqis.

Is there really no way to achieve what I want? I understand you might not want to include this in vimtex, but could you perhaps point me to what exactly I need to modify so that vim will recognize \begin{} and \end{} as sentence boundaries? I would be willing to give it a shot myself if I knew where to start.

I found vim-textobj-latex. That allows me (among other things) to operate on blocks delimited by \begin{} and \end{}, but it still does not count these as delimiters as sentence boundaries. To me it looks that rather than definining a new text object, I want to redefine, for .tex files, what is counted as a sentence. Not sure now if this issue belongs here though, I will bring it up in vim-textobj-latex (edit: not doing that, after all, since it seems that project has been stale for six years now...).

[lervag]

With set textwidth=80, let g:vimtex_format_enabled = 1, and the following latex example:

\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}

This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation environment below. The equation starts here:
\begin{equation}
  x = 1 \,,
\end{equation}
It should not be wrapper. This long sentence should, though. It is also more than eighty characters.

\end{document}

Now I do gggqG, and the result is this:

\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}

This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation
environment below. The equation starts here:
\begin{equation}
  x = 1 \,,
\end{equation}
It should not be wrapper. This long sentence should, though. It is also more
than eighty characters.

\end{document}

So, I was wrong about gw, you need to use gq (see :help gq; the point here is that we use a custom formatexpr).

Interesting. The same settings and sequence for me produce this:

\documentclass{minimal} \begin{document}                                             
                                                                                     
This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation      
environment below. The equation starts here: \begin{equation} x = 1 \,,              
\end{equation} It should not be wrapper. This long sentence should, though. It       
 is also more than eighty characters.                                                
                                                                                 
\end{document}

Perhaps there is interference from something else that I have installed...

I removed all vim-textobj plugins I had installed, but the result is still the same. No idea what else could make it not work -- any suggestions how I might diagnose what is the cause?

While I would still rather figure out why the solution above does somehow not work for me, I have meanwhile discovered an alternative. Using vim-textobj-sentence, I took inspiration from this unmerged pull request and modified l:re_term as follows:

  let l:re_term =                                                                    
      \ '([!?]|(' .                                                                  
      \ l:re_abbrev_neg_lookback .                                                   
      \ '\.))+[' .                                                                   
      \ l:trailing .                                                                 
      \ ']*' .                                                                       
      \ '\\begin\{' /                                                                
      \ '\\end\{'     

Of course, globally patching the plugin is unsatisfactory, but I think I can use ftplugin to apply this on the fly for TeX files only.

Okay, it was a little more complicated, yet, but I finally have a working solution. Leaving this here if anyone ends up here looking wor the same thing in wanted.

[lervag]

Perhaps there is interference from something else that I have installed...

I don't know why it doesn't work, but let's find out. When you're in the relevant LaTeX example file, what does :echo &formatexpr say?

The simplest way for me to help you is for you to make a minimal example. In particular, a minimal vimrc file. In this case, I propose:

" test.vim
set nocompatible
let &rtp = '~/.vim/bundle/vimtex,' . &rtp
let &rtp .= ',~/.vim/bundle/vimtex/after'
filetype plugin indent on
syntax enable

set textwidth=80

let g:tex_flavor = 'latex'
let g:vimtex_format_enabled = 1

% test.tex
\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}

This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation environment below. The equation starts here:
\begin{equation}
  x = 1 \,,
\end{equation}
It should not be wrapper. This long sentence should, though. It is also more than eighty characters.

\end{document}

With the above, you can do:

1. vim -u test.vim test.tex
2. In normal mode: gggqG

The result for me (with both Vim and neovim) is as mentioned in my other post.

Btw: I'm mostly ignoring your alternatives, but thanks for investigating and suggesting them - they might be interesting to others!

Perhaps there is interference from something else that I have installed...

I don't know why it doesn't work, but let's find out. When you're in the relevant LaTeX example file, what does :echo &formatexpr say?

In my normal setup (Neovim with a bunch of plugins), it does not say anything.

The simplest way for me to help you is for you to make a minimal example. In particular, a minimal vimrc file. In this case, I propose:

" test.vim
set nocompatible
let &rtp = '~/.vim/bundle/vimtex,' . &rtp
let &rtp .= ',~/.vim/bundle/vimtex/after'
filetype plugin indent on
syntax enable

set textwidth=80

let g:tex_flavor = 'latex'
let g:vimtex_format_enabled = 1

% test.tex
\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}

This is a long sentence, exceeding eighty characters and containing an equation environment below. The equation starts here:
\begin{equation}
  x = 1 \,,
\end{equation}
It should not be wrapper. This long sentence should, though. It is also more than eighty characters.

\end{document}

With the above, you can do:

1. `vim -u test.vim test.tex`

2. In normal mode: `gggqG`

With standard vim and your setup above, is says vimtex#format#formatexpr(). In line with that, gggqG also does the right thing!

The result for me (with both Vim and neovim) is as mentioned in my other post.

Btw: I'm mostly ignoring your alternatives, but thanks for investigating and suggesting them - they might be interesting to others!

Yes, I understand. I realize those comments are slightly off topic here, not pertaining directly to vimtex, but I left them because I thought others might look here.

[lervag]

In my normal setup (Neovim with a bunch of plugins), it does not say anything.

With standard vim and your setup above, is says vimtex#format#formatexpr(). In line with that, gggqG also does the right thing!

Which means your normal setup is flawed. What is your normal setup?

Okay, I just found it: In my tests, I always either typed let g:vimtex_format_enabled = 1 on the command line or put it in after/ftplugin/tex.vim. Neither is sufficient, it needs to be earlier in my config infrastructure. My bad (although perhaps subtle), thank you for all your help in tracking this down!

[lervag]

Great, happy to hear it!

Note:

• A lot of plugins, like vimtex, need the configuration to be specified before the plugin is loaded. This might be a little bit subtle, but when you "get it", it is quite natural.
• Configuration for vimtex (and generally all plugins) should therefore go in your .vimrc file.
• Configuration in after/plugin/... and after/ftplugin/... can be used to override behaviour of plugins.