Operating on text objects does not work when the cursor is outside of them

[olhau]

Description

It is possible to act on Vim builtin text objects from outside of them: if the cursor is not in the text object, a search for the next one will be performed and the operation will be run from there. With vimtex text objects this is not possible as far as I can see. Is this the intended behaviour?

Steps to reproduce

minimal.tex:

\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}
Hello world! $(x)$
\end{document}

1. cd /PATH/TO/vimtex/test/example-minimal
2. nvim --clean -u minivimrc
3. Open the file minimal.tex above
4. With the cursor on H, type da$ in normal mode

Expected behavior

The block $(x)$ gets deleted and the cursor moves to its place. If I type da( in the same situation, then (x) gets deleted and the cursor moves to the second $.

Actual behavior

Nothing happens.

Do you use a latexmkrc file?

No

VimtexInfo

System info:
  OS: Gentoo Linux
  LaTeX version: pdfTeX 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.26 (TeX Live 2024 Gentoo Linux)
  Vim version: NVIM v0.11.4
  Has clientserver: true
  Servername: /run/user/1000/nvim.7779.0
  $PATH:
    - /opt/bin
    - /usr/bin
    - /usr/lib/llvm/19/bin
    - /usr/lib/llvm/20/bin
    - /usr/local/bin
    - /usr/local/sbin

VimTeX project: main
  base: main.tex
  root: /home/olivier/.local/share/nvim/lazy/vimtex/test/example-minimal
  tex: /home/olivier/.local/share/nvim/lazy/vimtex/test/example-minimal/main.tex
  main parser: current file verified
  document class: minimal
  document class options: 
  compiler: latexmk
    engine: -pdf
    options:
      -verbose
      -file-line-error
      -synctex=1
      -interaction=nonstopmode
    callback: 1
    continuous: 1
    executable: latexmk
  viewer: General
  qf method: LaTeX logfile

[lervag]

It is possible to act on Vim builtin text objects from outside of them: if the cursor is not in the text object, a search for the next one will be performed and the operation will be run from there. With vimtex text objects this is not possible as far as I can see. Is this the intended behaviour?

Yes, to be honest. I might be wrong, but I think the way the builtin text objects works has changed since the first versions of VimTeX. And I was a little bit late to this party, thus this has never landed in VimTeX. However, there is an option that allows to use targets.vim which at least allows the in… variant where n means "next text object".

Now, it might not be impossible to add this functionality. It's been a while since the last time I worked on this part of the code. So I could at least look into it. I'll consider only the i$ and a$ text object first, then we could open new issues for the remaining text objects if it is a success.

[olhau]

Thanks a lot. I'd agree that i$/a$ are the most important ones for this issue.

For now I can emulate the behaviour of builtin text objects with simple mappings like this:

local goto_math = function()
  return vim.api.nvim_eval("vimtex#syntax#in_mathzone()") == 1 and '' or '<plug>(vimtex-]n)'
end

vim.keymap.set('n', 'da$', function() return goto_math() .. 'da$' end, { expr = true, remap = true })

Of course this is not very elegant (must be done separately for each operator), and presumably has other issues as well.

Also, if this is really the behaviour one wants, the same can be done with vimtex-env-toggle-math/vimtex-env-change-math/vimtex-env-delete-math. I suppose that this is less problematic than with text objects (and probably easier to implement in vimtex).

[lervag]

Thanks; I'll look into this when I get the time!