vim-indent-guides/README.markdown

# Indent Guides
Indent Guides is a plugin for visually displaying indent levels in Vim.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/ONgoj.png" width="448" height="448" alt="" />

## Features:
* Can detect both tab and space indent styles.
* Automatically inspects your colorscheme and picks appropriate colors (gVim only).
* Will highlight indent levels with alternating colors.
* Full support for gVim and basic support for Terminal Vim.
* Seems to work on Windows gVim 7.3 (haven't done any extensive tests though).
* Customizable size for indent guides, eg. skinny guides (soft-tabs only).
* Customizable start indent level.
* Highlight support for files with a mixture of tab and space indent styles.

## Requirements
* Vim 7.2+

## Installation
To install the plugin copy `autoload`, `plugin`, `doc` directories into your `.vim` directory.

### Pathogen
If you have [Pathogen](http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2332) installed, clone this repo into a subdirectory of your `.vim/bundle` directory like so:

```bash
cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/nathanaelkane/vim-indent-guides.git
```

### Vundle
If you have [Vundle](https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim) installed, add the following line to your `~/.vimrc` in the appropriate spot (see the Vundle.vim README for help):

```vim
Plugin 'nathanaelkane/vim-indent-guides'
```

and then run the following command from inside Vim:

```vim
:PluginInstall
```

## Usage
The default mapping to toggle the plugin is `<Leader>ig`.

You can also use the following commands inside Vim:

```vim
:IndentGuidesEnable
:IndentGuidesDisable
:IndentGuidesToggle
```

If you would like to have indent guides enabled by default, you can add the following to your `~/.vimrc`:

```vim
let g:indent_guides_enable_on_vim_startup = 1
```

### gVim
**This plugin should work with gVim out of the box, no configuration needed.** It will automatically inspect your colorscheme and pick appropriate colors.

### Setting custom indent colors
Here's an example of how to define custom colors instead of using the ones the plugin automatically generates for you. Add this to your `.vimrc` file:

```vim
let g:indent_guides_auto_colors = 0
autocmd VimEnter,Colorscheme * :hi IndentGuidesOdd  guibg=red   ctermbg=3
autocmd VimEnter,Colorscheme * :hi IndentGuidesEven guibg=green ctermbg=4
```

Alternatively you can add the following lines to your colorscheme file.

```vim
hi IndentGuidesOdd  guibg=red   ctermbg=3
hi IndentGuidesEven guibg=green ctermbg=4
```

### Terminal Vim
At the moment Terminal Vim only has basic support. This means is that colors won't be automatically calculated based on your colorscheme. Instead, some preset colors are used depending on whether `background` is set to `dark` or `light`.

When `set background=dark` is used, the following highlight colors will be defined:

```vim
hi IndentGuidesOdd  ctermbg=black
hi IndentGuidesEven ctermbg=darkgrey
```

Alternatively, when `set background=light` is used, the following highlight colors will be defined:

```vim
hi IndentGuidesOdd  ctermbg=white
hi IndentGuidesEven ctermbg=lightgrey
```

If for some reason it's incorrectly defining light highlight colors instead of dark ones or vice versa, the first thing you should check is that the `background` value is being set correctly for your colorscheme. Sometimes it's best to manually set the `background` value in your `.vimrc`, for example:

```vim
colorscheme desert256
set background=dark
```

Alternatively you can manually setup the highlight colors yourself, see `:help indent_guides_auto_colors` for an example.

## Help
`:help indent-guides`

## Screenshots
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/7tMBl.png" width="448" height="448" alt="" />
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/EvrqK.png" width="448" height="448" alt="" />
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/hHqp2.png" width="448" height="448" alt="" />