This Vim plug-in furnishes

• an operator mapping gw in normal mode, for example gwip operates on a paragraph,
• a mapping gww (and gwgw) in normal mode that operates on a single line,
• a mapping gw that operates on the visual selection, and
• a command ChopSentences that operates on given range (equal to the whole buffer if unspecified)

that put each sentence onto a single line.

That is, lines are only broken at punctuation marks .?! (customizable by the variable g:punctuation_marks) for better version control of prose in markdown, tex or other text files.

For best results in TeX, ensure that latexindent is installed and the folder that contains its executable is listed in $PATH (respectively in %PATH% on Microsoft Windows). This formatter will also distinguish TeX markup from prose to preserve syntactic line breaks.

Usage

For example, hitting gwip on

  Hello! How are you? I'm Fine. And you?

turns it into

  Hello!
  How are you?
  I'm Fine.
  And you?

Configuration

The variable g:punctuation_marks defines punctuation marks at which sentences are split up other than .; it is by default set to

  let g:punctuation_marks = '?!'

If you want to include , as a punctuation mark, then you might want to add such a snippet to your vimrc, to ensure proper indentation:

augroup vimrcSpell
  autocmd!
    autocmd BufNew,BufRead * 
          \ if &l:modifiable && !&l:readonly && &l:spell | setlocal cinoptions+=+0 | endif
    autocmd OptionSet spell
          \ if v:option_new | setlocal cinoptions+=+0 | else| setlocal cinoptions-=+0 | endif
augroup END

The variables g:opening_delimiters and g:closing_delimiters and its buffer-local analogs define delimiters such as parentheses and quotes; its global variant default to

  let g:opening_delimiters = '[(''"„“«»‚‘‹›'
  let g:closing_delimiters = '])''"“”«»‘’‹›'

Its buffer-local variant defaults in Markdown files to

  let g:opening_delimiters = g:opening_delimiters . '*_'
  let b:closing_delimiters = g:closing_delimiters . '*_'

The global variable g:latexindent and its buffer-local analog b:latexindent defines whether latexindent should be used; by default, if available, latexindent is used in TeX (and pandoc files) only. (That is, b:latexindent is enabled in all buffers of these file types.)

The global variable g:latexindent_options (and its buffer-local analog b:latexindent_options) defines the command-line options passed to latexindent as listed by latexindent -h; the buffer-local variable is undefined and the global variable is by default set to

  let g:latexindent_options = ''

The variable g:latexindent_yaml_options (and its buffer-local analog b:latexindent_yaml_options) defines the documented YAML options passed to latexindent; the buffer-local variable is undefined and the global variable is by default set to

  let g:latexindent_yaml_options = ''
       \ . 'modifyLineBreaks:items:ItemStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ','
       \ . 'modifyLineBreaks:environments:'
              \ . 'BeginStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
              \ . 'BodyStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
              \ . 'EndStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
              \ . 'EndFinishesWithLineBreak: 1' . ';'
              \ . 'DBSFinishesWithLineBreak: 1' . ','
       \ . 'modifyLineBreaks:specialBeginEnd:displayMath:'
             \ . 'SpecialBeginStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
             \ . 'SpecialBodyStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
             \ . 'SpecialEndStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
             \ . 'SpecialEndFinishesWithLineBreak: 1' . ','
       \ . 'modifyLineBreaks:specialBeginEnd:displayMathTeX:'
             \ . 'SpecialBeginStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
             \ . 'SpecialBodyStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
             \ . 'SpecialEndStartsOnOwnLine: 1' . ';'
             \ . 'SpecialEndFinishesWithLineBreak: 1' . ','

For example, to split up sentences also after ; or : (in addition to .), and put every sentence in parentheses onto its proper line, add to your vimrc

let g:latexindent_yaml_options = 'modifyLineBreaks:oneSentencePerLine:sentencesEndWith:'
       \ . 'other: \;|\:' . ';'
       \ . 'modifyLineBreaks:oneSentencePerLine:' . 'sentencesFollow:other: "\)"' . ','
       \ . 'modifyLineBreaks:oneSentencePerLine:' . 'sentencesBeginWith:other: [a-z]'

Mappings

To change mappings, for example, to use zy instead of gw, add the lines

    nmap zy <plug>(ChopSentences)
    xmap zy <plug>(ChopSentences)

to your vimrc.

Hints

To replace (or delete, or any other operation by Vim) up to the next punctuation mark, say . and ,;:!?, add

onoremap <silent> . :<c-u>call search('\v%([\[(''"„“«»‚‘‹›[:space:]]\|^)%(%(%(%([[:upper:]]{2,}\|[[:upper:]][[:lower:]]{2,}%([\/''`’-][[:upper:]]?[[:lower:]]+)*\|[[:lower:]]+%([\/''`’-][[:lower:]]+)+\|[[:lower:]]{2,}\|[[:digit:]]{3,})[\])''"“”«»‘’‹›[:space:]]?\zs[.,;:!?])))','W')<CR>

to your vimrc! Then, for example, hitting c. will change and d. delete the text up to the next punctuation mark. Say c. turns That's*it, Sir., where * stands for the cursor position, into That's*, Sir. This can be thought of as a counterpart to Vim's built-in C and D commands for prose.

To normalize Unicode Homoglyphs, for example, of white spaces and punctuation marks, before chopping sentences, see the Vim plug-in vim-unicode-homoglyphs that highlights and normalizes Unicode homoglyphs.