Vim Ghost

Edit browser textarea content in Vim/Neovim!

1. Install this firefox addon or this Chrome extension

2. Add this plugin

   " Vim-plug
   Plug 'raghur/vim-ghost', {'do': ':GhostInstall'}

3. Ensure you have a vim/neovim instance open. Run :GhostStart to start the server.

4. On any textarea, click the ghost icon - switch to neovim and edit!. Content is sync’ed real time. Works both ways - edits in the browser window are pushed to neovim as well.

5. When done, just delete the buffer with :bd! - you’ll be disconnected

Configuring filetype

Whenever a buffer is connected, a User event vim-ghost#connected is raised. Here’s a quick sample of setting filetype to markdown if the textarea was on github or reddit

function! s:SetupGhostBuffer()
    if match(expand("%:a"), '\v/ghost-(github|reddit)\.com-')
        set ft=markdown
    endif
endfunction

augroup vim-ghost
    au!
    au User vim-ghost#connected call s:SetupGhostBuffer()
augroup END

Requirements

• Recent neovim/vim

• Python 3.4+

• Python plugin host - python3 -c 'import pynvim' should not error

• Python websocket server https://github.com/dpallot/simple-websocket-server.git

  • This is automatically installed as a pip --user dependency when :GhostInstall runs.

additional requirements for vim

• vim-hug-neovim-rpc

• nvim-yarp

" Only enabled for Vim 8 (not for Neovim).
Plug 'roxma/nvim-yarp', v:version >= 800 && !has('nvim') ? {} : { 'on': [], 'for': [] }
Plug 'roxma/vim-hug-neovim-rpc', v:version >= 800 && !has('nvim') ? {} : { 'on': [], 'for': [] }

Auto switching to vim:

Optional, but highly recommended - Switching focus to Neovim

• Linux: The xdotool command - if available, will be used to focus the nvim window. Works in console, tmux or guis like neovim-qt

  • On Ubuntu, you can install it with sudo apt-get install xdotool

• macOS: Set the g:ghost_darwin_app variable to the name of your app (see docs).

• Windows: If pywinauto (https://github.com/pywinauto/pywinauto) is available, it will be used to bring the neovim-qt to foreground.

  # Ensure that you install this module for the version of python
  # that is loaded in neovim
  pip install pywinauto

  Limitations: Currently, on windows, the processname is hardcoded to nvim-qt If you use any of the other GUIs for neovim (OniVim, gonvim etc) then this will not work.

Rationale

With Firefox moving to webextensions, It’s all text is dead. Typing in text areas is a royal PITA and I was looking for a replacement. Came across GhostText - but the vim addon seems dead and uses tcl :ugh:

My vimscript fu is pretty limited - so I thought I’d write a python plugin for neovim.

TODOS

PR’s welcome. Some areas:

• vim compatibility - DONE

Love it or just find it as useful as I do? Star this repo to let me know