Vim, VimTex: environments and commands in LaTeX

A smart system for writing

Vim is a great editing tool.

LaTeX is a “State of the Art” typesetting system.

Vim and LaTeX together make a powerful writing system, but an add-on is needed to relate them.

VimTex provides exactly that target by relating Vim to LaTeX, and it does its job very well.

So Vim and VimTex is a smart system for every kind of writer in LaTeX.

The topic is vast and certainly cannot be contained in a short post like this one.

In this article, I simply cover functions for managing environments and commands.

VimTex Built-in functions for environments and commands

I assume that those who use LaTeX already know the difference between commands and environments.

VimTeX has some built-in functions for managing commands and environments, but only to delete or change them.

The summary table of built-in surround functions is the following:

As you can see, the key combinations match the initials of the related functions.

For example: D(elete) S(surrounding) C(command) = dsc or C(hange) S(urroundig) E(nvironment) = cse and so on.

This makes it easier to remember the sequence of keys.

Then with the built-in surround functions of VimTex you can delete or change environment or command tags.

For example:

• if you are inside an itemize environment, you can delete the \begin{itemize} ... \end{itemize} tags surrounding the text by pressing the key combination dse.
• if you are inside an itemize environment, you can change the \begin{itemize} ... \end{itemize} tags into \begin{enumerate} ... \end{enumerate} by pressing: cse enumerate.
• if you are inside a textit command, you can delete the command surrounding the text by pressing the key combination dsc.
• if you are inside a textit command, you can change it to textbf by pressing csc textbf.

But the question is: can you add environments or commands with the VimTex built-in functions?

The answer is no, but…

It’s possible to create a custom function that performs this operation.

Two solutions are offered by VimTex programmer itself, Karl Yngve Lervåg whom I thank for the excellent work, currently at lines 5776 et seq. of his vimtex.txt file, chapter vimtex-faq-surround.

I find that the first solution fits perfectly with context.

Create a surround function in VimTex based upon surround.vim plugin

For this purpose, you need to install another plugin, surround.vim and make a small change in your configuration file.

As above described, you must insert a small additional text string in the vim configuration file, i.e. in .vimrc (for Linux/macOS) or _vimrc (for Windows).

The purpose is to extend the surround.vim functions by adding the ys(object)c and ys(object)e key-combinations for creating commands and environments in LaTeX.

Here is the code:

augroup latexSurround
autocmd!
autocmd FileType tex call s:latexSurround()
augroup END

function! s:latexSurround()
let b:surround_{char2nr("e")}
\ = "\\begin{\1environment: \1}\n\t\r\n\\end{\1\1}"
let b:surround_{char2nr("c")} = "\\\1command: \1{\r}"
endfunction

Now you have the following two new resources in your Vim “swiss-knife” for LaTeX:

Obviously, you need to insert the usual motion markers or text objects: for example:

• yswe center to surround a word by the center environment,
• yssc textbf to surround an entire line by the textbf command,
• ysiwe comment to surround a word with the cursor anywhere within it by the comment environment
• ysiwc section to surround a word with the cursor anywhere within it by the section command.

Thank You for your attention.