GhostText for Vim

Vim plugin for communicating with the GhostText browser plugin.

Usage

To install the plugin it is recommended to use a Vim plugin manager such as vim-plug, Vundle or Pathogen. Add the following line to your .vimrc:

Plug 'atkenny15/vim-ghosttext'

The following commands are provided:

GhostStart: Start the GhostText HTTP server
GhostStop: Stop the GhostText HTTP server (this is called on QuitPre if GhostStart has been called)

A detailed log can be found at: <temp>/ghosttext-vim-log.txt. Under Unix like systems this is typically /tmp/ghosttext-vim-log.txt. Please provide this log if you run into any issues.

To use the plugin:

Launch vim/gvim
Start the HTTP server with :GhostStart
Change to the Vim buffer you want to work with
- All text in this buffer will be replaced
- Each connection from GhostText will communicate with the current buffer at the time the connection is made
Navigate to a web page supported by GhostText and click the ghost button to connect to the editor
Once the connection is made begin typing in either the browser or Vim and both should update in real-time with changes from the other application
When done editing click the GhostText button in the browser to close the connection
- Due to a bug in GhostText, do not click the button again until reloading the page
At this point Vim can be left open for additional connections or closed.

Here is a demo made using Peek:

Design

GhostText Interface

Launching GhostText from the web browser triggers a GET request to port 4001 (by default, configurable in the extension). It expects a response containing the JSON structure:

{
    "ProtocolVersion": 1,
    "WebSocketPort": <port>,
}

GhostText then acts as a WebSocket client on port <port> exchanging the following JSON packets:

{
    'text': <text>,
    'selections': [{'start': <start>, 'end': <end>}],
    'title': '',
    'url': '',
    'syntax': '',
}

<text> is the Unicode text data to be displayed. This plugin sets <start> and <end> to len(<text>), title to ghosttext-vim, and does not change the other values. The other values seem to be specific to Sublime Text. Some details are in the code here:

changed_text = view.substr(sublime.Region(0, view.size()))
selections = OnSelectionModifiedListener._get_selections(view)
response = json.dumps({
    'title': view.name(),
    'text':  changed_text,
    'syntax': view.scope_name(0),
    'selections': selections
})