Editing Qt4 sources in vim

If you like vim editor here are some tips, especially how to enable keyword highlighting for Qt4 keywords. Vim version 7 is used, you should by able to apply it on earlier version of vim as well.

What we want is this:

Preparing .vimrc (_vimrc)

Here are some useful tips what to put to vim startup config file.

On linux, edit ~/.vimrc, on Windows C:\PATH\TO\VIM\INSTALATION\_vimrc (ie. C:\Program Files\vim\_vimrc) and put following lines in it:

" this is a comment
color pablo " pablo color scheme, my favourite
set enc=UTF-8 " set encoding to UTF-8, no more local charsets
set backupdir=C:\\Temp " put backup and swap files in this dir, not in actual directory (annoying)
set dir=C:\\Temp " the same
set number " show line numbers

Highlighting Qt4 keywords (class names, connect, SIGNAL, SLOT)

The fast way

Download c.vim and replace VIMDIR\syntax\c.vim (backup original file first, one never knows). All done :]

A little bit slower way

Open your VIMDIR\syntax\c.vim and search for:

" A bunch of useful C keywords
syn keyword	cStatement	goto break return continue asm
...
..

Replace syn keyword ... line with this one:

syn keyword	cStatement	goto break return continue asm connect SIGNAL SLOT

Open vim-qt4-keywords.txt. Copy that huge line and put it somwhere in the c.vim (I've placed it after line 157). Be aware of trailing newlines. They may cause vim not to load properly c.vim file.

Perl script to extract Qt4 class names from include sources

As you probable asume I didn't produced class list "by hand". Here is simple perl script I wrote for this task.

make_vim_class_list.pl

Usage:

Script uses module File::Listing.

Most simple use of this script is the following:

  1. Copy include directory from QTDIR to some directory (ie. MYDIR)
  2. Put make_vim_class_list.pl script to MYDIR
  3. Run script like this: ./make_vim_class_list.pl . (note actual directory [dot] as an argument)

This produces 2 files c.vim (huge line to put in your c.vim) and qtclasslist.txt (each class name on new line, maybe it'll be usefull to you somehow).

Notes:

If your QTDIR environment variable is set, script scans includes in QTDIR/includes.

Works only with Qt4 includes, won't work for Qt3.x.