[Tex/LaTex] Highlight / color parts of text

colorcommentshighlightingvim

LaTex newbie here. Currently using vim with solarized color scheme to edit .tex documents.

When writing I often jump around to different parts of the document, leaving gaps behind to work on later. In Microsoft Word I would highlight text in yellow to remind myself what needed to be finished.
How can I do something similar with my .tex documents? I have seen this question but the answers focus on adding notes or highlighting to the final pdf product. I want something to stand out in the actual tex document I'm working on.

I tried putting comments after the lines, but these didn't stand out very well (almost same color as standard text). This may simply be a color scheme problem.

What is a typical/recommended way to do this?

Best Answer

You could use the soul package. If you put \usepackage{xcolor} and \usepackage{soul} in your preamble, then you can simply use \hl{...} to highlight a piece of text.

Code

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{soul}

\begin{document}

Nullam accumsan, dui vitae vehicula aliquet, libero ligula congue
turpis, rutrum molestie ante nisl ac mi. Sed sem quam, hendrerit in
fermentum id, elementum quis magna. Proin ac diam lacus, eu egestas
leo. Donec ultricies nulla vel massa semper adipiscing. Etiam
venenatis congue molestie. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora
torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Vivamus ante
risus, gravida non dapibus id, vestibulum nec erat. Cras in lorem vel
nisi pulvinar tristique. Phasellus dignissim, mauris vel convallis
sagittis, tortor magna malesuada justo, nec placerat lorem neque id
mi.

Donec ante enim, imperdiet at eleifend vitae, accumsan ut massa. Donec
laoreet venenatis imperdiet. \hl{Quisque facilisis, arcu nec tempor
varius, felis diam faucibus augue, ac auctor nisi orci ac
justo. Vestibulum et purus orci, sed hendrerit nulla. Fusce et nisi
in justo fringilla malesuada eu ut neque. Integer ac tellus eget
enim aliquam egestas ut sit amet elit. Nulla sagittis tellus ut
velit euismod pulvinar. In dapibus laoreet lectus, sed vulputate
justo laoreet ut. Aenean semper tempor tortor, sed vehicula ligula
pellentesque eget. Sed semper, odio ut ultrices lobortis, nunc nibh
viverra quam, pulvinar tincidunt lacus felis egestas enim. Sed
porttitor eros pretium magna pellentesque sit amet varius nisl
rhoncus.

Suspendisse blandit gravida semper. Fusce luctus, nisl non adipiscing
euismod, ante mi mollis massa, ut vulputate sem nulla non nisi. Mauris
erat est, tincidunt sollicitudin tincidunt in, condimentum ac
turpis. Proin accumsan neque eu mauris accumsan vel} condimentum quam
porta. Nam imperdiet lacinia ligula, vitae luctus orci volutpat
et. Morbi in turpis in lorem venenatis suscipit. Mauris cursus libero
ac sem imperdiet venenatis. Nulla volutpat leo nibh, at ornare
urna. Etiam rhoncus ornare volutpat. Cras pharetra nisl vitae turpis
pulvinar eu suscipit lacus pulvinar. Phasellus ut metus nibh. In at
elit eleifend odio molestie ullamcorper. Integer cursus risus ac quam
viverra tempus.

\end{document}

Result

enter image description here

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Cool Text Highlighting in LaTeX

Much to my surprise, this is doable, by combining TikZ and soul. I don't think I like how it looks (though to each their own), but it was a fun challenge. The idea is to use TikZ to draw the necessary boxes up to line breaks, and then restart each box on a new line. But how to do this? Well, it turns out that soul works by inserting things after every possible hyphenation point (which it calls "syllables", a terminology misuse I find irritating)—importantly, this includes the beginnings and ends of words. And the only time we ever see a line break is after a hyphenation point! This is good: we'll use soul to insert a TikZ node at each syllable break, and then draw them together. For this, we use TikZ's remember picture and overlay options; the former enables you to refer to nodes in the labeled picture from outside, and the latter makes the picture take up no space.

To implement this, we surround each hyphenation unit with two "marks" (TikZ pictures). The "start" mark checks to see if it's on a new line; if it is, it draws the highlighting rectangle from the last recorded start position to the last recorded end position, and then records the new start position. The "stop" mark just records the new stop position. We also have to make sure that at a hyphenation point, the stop position is after the hyphen. And of course, we surround the whole picture with a start position and a stop position. Note that due to the remember picture machinery, you have to compile the document twice.

Here's a working document with ragged highlights:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}

\makeatletter

\newcommand{\defhighlighter}[3][]{%
  \tikzset{every highlighter/.style={color=#2, fill opacity=#3, #1}}%
}

\defhighlighter{yellow}{.5}

\newcommand{\highlight@DoHighlight}{
  \fill [ decoration = {random steps, amplitude=1pt, segment length=15pt}
        , outer sep = -15pt, inner sep = 0pt, decorate
        , every highlighter, this highlighter ]
        ($(begin highlight)+(0,8pt)$) rectangle ($(end highlight)+(0,-3pt)$) ;
}

\newcommand{\highlight@BeginHighlight}{
  \coordinate (begin highlight) at (0,0) ;
}

\newcommand{\highlight@EndHighlight}{
  \coordinate (end highlight) at (0,0) ;
}

\newdimen\highlight@previous
\newdimen\highlight@current

\DeclareRobustCommand*\highlight[1][]{%
  \tikzset{this highlighter/.style={#1}}%
  \SOUL@setup
  %
  \def\SOUL@preamble{%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, remember picture]
      \highlight@BeginHighlight
      \highlight@EndHighlight
    \end{tikzpicture}%
  }%
  %
  \def\SOUL@postamble{%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, remember picture]
      \highlight@EndHighlight
      \highlight@DoHighlight
    \end{tikzpicture}%
  }%
  %
  \def\SOUL@everyhyphen{%
    \discretionary{%
      \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@hyphkern
      \SOUL@sethyphenchar
      \tikz[overlay, remember picture] \highlight@EndHighlight ;%
    }{%
    }{%
      \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@charkern
    }%
  }%
  %
  \def\SOUL@everyexhyphen##1{%
    \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@hyphkern
    \hbox{##1}%
    \discretionary{%
      \tikz[overlay, remember picture] \highlight@EndHighlight ;%
    }{%
    }{%
      \SOUL@setkern\SOUL@charkern
    }%
  }%
  %
  \def\SOUL@everysyllable{%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, remember picture]
      \path let \p0 = (begin highlight), \p1 = (0,0) in \pgfextra
        \global\highlight@previous=\y0
        \global\highlight@current =\y1
      \endpgfextra (0,0) ;
      \ifdim\highlight@current < \highlight@previous
        \highlight@DoHighlight
        \highlight@BeginHighlight
      \fi
    \end{tikzpicture}%
    \the\SOUL@syllable
    \tikz[overlay, remember picture] \highlight@EndHighlight ;%
  }%
  \SOUL@
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
  Lorem ipsum \highlight{dolor sit amet, consectetur adipis-icing elit, sed do
eiusmod tempor} incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exercitation \highlight[red]{ullamco $laboris$ nisi ut
aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit} in
voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.  Excepteur sint
occaecat \highlight[green, draw=blue]{cupidatat non proident,
suntinculpaquiofficiadeseruntmollitanimidestlaborum.
Loremipsumdolorsitametconsecteturadipisicingelitseddoeiusmodtemporincididuntutlabore-etdoloremagnaaliqua.}
I suppose I could write some more text here.
\end{document}

This produces the following output:

Lipsum text with ragged highlights.

There are two formatting modes: \defhighlighter[misc]{color}{opacity}, which sets the fill color to color, the fill opacity to opacity, and styles every highlighter block (via every highlighter) with those plus the misc options. Secondly, for a specific block of highlighted text, you can use \highlight[tikz-opts]{...} to set options locally. These are both demonstrated in the above code.

There are currently four caveats. The first is that this will write one line to your aux file for each syllable break in the highlighted text, in addition to one for the beginning of each, one for the end of each, and one for each line break after a (real or inserted) hyphen. For instance, the example document wrote 222 lines to my aux file. This may or may not be a problem for you, but I'm not sure how to make it better. The second is that strange things happen if you let highlighting extend over a page break. (Although I might be able to fix this one….) The third is that I don't see a way to draw the highlighting in the background. (Because it's drawn so late, the pgfonlayer environment doesn't work.) This is why the text looks faded. You can adjust the opacity value if you don't like this, but I don't see how to avoid it (suggestions?). And the fourth is that I guessed the height of the font, because while I figure this should be a dimension in TeX somewhere, I don't know where (again, suggestions?).

[Tex/LaTex] Highlight environment by setting a gray background color

Just use mdframed package. Here is an example from the document with a little modification:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{mdframed}
\newtheorem{mdtheorem}{Theorem}
\newenvironment{theorem}%
  {\begin{mdframed}[backgroundcolor=lightgray]\begin{mdtheorem}}%
  {\end{mdtheorem}\end{mdframed}}

\begin{document}

\begin{theorem}
test
\end{theorem}

\end{document}