Anyone know of Objective-J syntax highlighting in vi?

Question

I have been looking at the new Objective-J / Cappuccino javascript framework from 280North. They provide plug-ins for SubEthaEdit and TextMate to handle syntax highlighting, but I primarily use vi. Does anyone know of a way to get Objective-J syntax highlighting in vi, or a good way to convert whatever format the other two editors use?

Answer 1

the source on github now include a vim highlight module.

I've found just doing what is suggested here is not enough:

• download the file as Francisco suggests

• unzip, cd Tools/ dir

• run the shell, sh install-tools

• copy the objj.vim file to vim dir, cp Tools/Editors/objj.vim /usr/share/vim/vim71/syntax/

Problem

I found no syntax highlighting worked for ".j" files. So the problem here is no file extension recognition. If you are using gvim as I am there is also no menu item.

Add Objective-J to gvim menu

To add a menu-item in gvim for Syntax->Ne-MO->Objective J:

• sudo vim /usr/share/vim/vim71/synmenu.vim

add the following line.

• an 50.70.465 &Syntax.Me-NO.Objective\ J :cal SetSyn("objj")<CR> below the objective-C entry.

save and quit

• :wq!

then reload a ".j" file in gvim. If you then go:

• Syntax->Ne-MO->Objective J

highlighting for your selected Objective-J file should occur.

Objective-J auto-highlighting?

But what about auto-highlighting when you load the file? There appears to be no file associations. So:

• sudo vim /usr/share/vim/vim7.1/filetype.vim

In the file you will find a list of filetype associations. If you want an idea where to add the line, search for "setf ocaml" in filetype.vim. Add the line below above (alphabetical):

• "" Objective J au BufNewFile,BufRead *.j setf objj

Save the result. You should now be able to load a file with a ".j" extension and syntax highlighting for Objective-J files works.

Result

Now you should get automatic recognition of the Objective-J files by file type ".j" and a way to set this filetype in gvim. This probably should be added by Bram or whoever does the official release of vim but for the moment this hack works for me. (Ubuntu 8.10, Vim 7.1)