Idea: highlight part of a file

[galou]

Would it be possible to fade parts of a buffer? When studying other people's code or for other reasons, I'd like to fade parts of a buffer (more precisely, highlight only between two given lines).

[TaDaa]

FYI there are a few plugins that support similar functionality to what you are looking for:

• limelight.vim - Iconic vim plugin from FZF author. Works well and this plugin takes a lot of inspiration from limelight already. Caveat: doesn't support dimmed syntax highlighting.
• twilight.nvim - Seems like a good alternative to limelight.vim; the main difference is that it bases highlights off of treesitter. Same issue and doesn't support dimmed syntax highlighting.
• focushere.nvim - Highlight visual selection, dim everything else. Same issue and doesn't support dimmed syntax highlighting.

I think focushere.nvim in particular is the closest match to the feature that you are requesting

---

I'm open to adding this into vimade as well, but will need to consider the approach for a bit. I also want to see if I can just add the feature into one of these existing plugins.

[TaDaa]

Just wanted to update this thread since I intentionally left the previous comment ambiguous as I wasn't sure if I could implement this with real syntax highlighting in Neovim (tldr - it works)

I also wanted to first take a look and see if this could have been added into the existing plugins as I would have preferred to keep the logic separate. Unfortunately, it would have meant rewriting the plugins and basically re-implementing Vimade.

I've been able to create a POC that proves out that this can be supported on Neovim, which was going to be the major hurdle (most of the logic I need for Vim is already built out). I'm going to release this for Neovim as version 2.5 for this plugin and Vim will be 3.0.0 when complete.

There are a few features I need to wrap up with the approach, I think it will likely be ready this week

[TaDaa]

This now exists, but undocumented for Neovim. Combined the features of the above-mentioned plugins but with actual highlighting and also added VimadeMark so that you can select ranges in windows to keep un-faded. Only works on Neovim 0.10+ currently (I can maybe support 0.9.0 for this feature with some additional work)

Changes include the following:

• New mode: ncmode = 'focus'. It can be used as part of the normal setup opts: vimade.setup({ncmode='focus'}). If you enable this mode, Vimade won't do anything until you use the command :VimadeFocus, indicating that you want to highlight around the cursor

• New command: :VimadeMark . VimadeMark also has sub-commands for easier removing of marks remove-win, remove-buf, remove-tab, remove-all. VimadeMark by itself is treated as a toggle command, meaning it will remove a mark under the cursor if it finds one. If not, it will add a mark. VimadeMark prevents the selected range from fading across windows. You can further customize the highlighting via :hi VimadeMark

• New command: :VimadeFocus. This command can be configured to highlight using a number of providers. I've created providers for treesitter (similar to twilight), blanks (similar to limelight), static (always highlight N lines), hlchunks (reads the scope from hlchunks plugin), mini-indentscope (scope from mini), and snacks (scope from snacks).

  You can configure VimadeFocus like the following:

vimade.setup({
focus = {
 providers = {
    filetypes = {
      default = {
        -- If you use mini.indentscope, snacks.indent, or hlchunk, you can also highlight the indent scope!
        -- {'snacks', {}},
        -- {'mini', {}},
        -- {'hlchunk', {}},
        {'treesitter', {
          min_node_size = 2, 
          min_size = 1,
          max_size = 0,
          -- exclude types either too large and/or mundane
          exclude = {
            'script_file',
            'stream',
            'document',
            'source_file',
            'translation_unit',
            'chunk',
            'module',
            'stylesheet',
            'statement_block',
            'block',
            'pair',
            'program',
            'switch_case',
            'catch_clause',
            'finally_clause',
            'property_signature',
            'dictionary',
            'assignment',
            'expression_statement',
            'compound_statement',
          }
        }},
        -- if treesitter fails or there isn't a good match, fallback to blanks (similar to limelight)
        {'blanks', {
          min_size = 1,
          max_size = '35%'
        }},
        -- if blanks fails to find a good match, fallback to static 35%
        {'static', {
          size = '35%'
        }},
      },
      -- You can make custom configurations for any filetype.  Here are some examples.
      -- markdown = {{'blanks', {min_size=0, max_size='50%'}}, {'static', {max_size='50%'}}},
      -- javascript = {
        -- -- only use treesitter (no fallbacks)
      --   {'treesitter', { min_node_size = 2, include = {'if_statement', ...}}},
      -- },
      -- typescript = {
      --   {'treesitter', { min_node_size = 2, exclude = {'if_statement'}}}, 
      --   {'static', {size = '35%'}}
      -- },
      -- java = {
        -- -- mini with a fallback to blanks
        -- {'mini', {min_size = 1, max_size = 20}},
        -- {'blanks', {min_size = 1, max_size = '100%' }}, 
      -- },
    },
  }
  }
})

[TaDaa]

Attaching a preview using the new Paradox recipe combined with Ayu theme

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1a3645e2-c348-40ae-9a0c-1312b13b063f

(Not sure why but github breaks the first 10 seconds of the video, but this one is good enough)