TOML Syntax Highlighting for Zola Front Matter in Vim
If you use Zola and use Vim to edit Markdown files in your content directory, you may notice that the TOML front matter meta-data at the top of the file isn't syntax highlighted.
If you already have TOML syntax highlighting set up for Vim, you can fix that with the following configuration:
unlet b:current_syntax
syntax include @Toml syntax/toml.vim
syntax region tomlFrontMatter start=/\%^+++$/ end=/^+++$/ contains=@Toml
Put this in ~/.vim/after/syntax/markdown.vim and the TOML front matter in your Markdown files should now be syntax highlighted.
The unlet line is needed for the file inclusion on the next line to work properly.
The syntax include line creates a cluster named @Toml that contains every syntax rule in all paths ending with syntax/toml.vim that Vim can find in its runtime path list.
The syntax region line denotes a Vim syntax region that we've chosen to name tomlFrontMatter.
The region starts if the very first line of the file matches +++, and continues until a +++ line is found.
The whole region is marked as containing the @Toml cluster from the previous line.
As a bonus, you can accomplish the same thing for YAML front matter in Jekyll with a similar configuration:
unlet b:current_syntax
syntax include @Yaml syntax/yaml.vim
syntax region yamlFrontMatter start=/\%^---$/ end=/^---$/ contains=@Yaml
Both of these configurations can co-exist in the same file too, applying either TOML or YAML syntax highlighting depending on whether +++ or --- is present at the top of the file.