Scoping

Learn about how Vale handles different file types, allowing it to selectively target or exclude certain sections of text.

Types, formats, and scopes #

Vale is “syntax aware,” which means that it’s capable of both applying rules to and ignoring certain sections of text. This functionality is implemented through a scoping system. A scope is specified through a selector such as paragraph.rst, which indicates that the rule applies to all paragraphs in reStructuredText files.

Here are a few examples:

• comment matches all source code comments;
• comment.line matches all source code line comments;
• heading.md matches all Markdown headings; and
• text.html matches all HTML scopes.

Vale classifies files into one of three types—markup, code, or text—that determine what scopes are available.

Within each type, there can be multiple supported formats—such as Markdown and AsciiDoc under markup. Since each format has access to the same scopes, rules are compatible across all formats within a particular type.

markup #

The default behavior for markup files is to apply rules to all non-ignored sections of the file (see Formats for more information). This means that for most rules you don’t need to specify a scope.

For rules that need to target specific sections of the file, you can use the following scopes:

code #

There are two code scopes: comment.line and comment.block.

text #

Any format not listed below is considered to be text and has no special scoping rules applied.

Multi-scope rules #

Rules may define multiple scopes by using a YAML array:

scope:
    # h1 OR h2
    - heading.h1
    - heading.h2

Negation & multi-part selectors #

Any scope prefaced with “~” is negated:

scope:
  # all scopes != h2
  - ~heading.h2

You can chain multiple scopes together using “&”:

scope:
  - ~blockquote & ~heading

Formats #

Markdown #

GitHub-Flavored Markdown support is built in. Vale ignores indented blocks, fenced blocks, and code spans by default.

The supported extensions are .md, .mdown, .markdown, and .markdn.

If you’re using another flavor of Markdown, see non-standard markup for information on how to make your flavor compatible.

HTML #

HTML5 support is built in. Vale ignores script, style, pre, code, and tt tags by default.

The supported extensions are .html, .htm, .shtml, and .xhtml.

reStructuredText #

reStructuredText is supported through the external program rst2html. You can get rst2html by installing either Sphinx or docutils.

Vale ignores literal blocks, inline literals, and code-blocks by default. The supported extensions are .rst and .rest.

See Non-standard markup for more information on ignoring other types of markup.

AsciiDoc #

AsciiDoc is supported through the external program Asciidoctor.

Vale ignores listing blocks and inline literals by default. The supported extensions are .adoc, .asciidoc and .asc.

You can customize how asciidoctor is called by passing document attributes:

StylesPath = <...>

[asciidoctor]
# attribute = value
#
# where 'YES' enables and 'NO' disables.

# enable
experimental = YES

# assign a specific value
attribute-missing = drop

[*]
BasedOnStyles = Vale

# normal config ...

DITA #

DITA is supported through the DITA Open Toolkit. You’ll need to follow the installation instructions, including the optional step of adding the absolute path for the bin directory to the PATH system variable.

Vale ignores <codeblock>, <tt>, and <codeph> elements by default.

XML #

XML is supported through the external program xsltproc.

You also need to provide a version 1.0 XSL Transformation (XSLT) for converting to HTML:

[*.xml]
Transform = docbook-xsl-snapshot/html/docbook.xsl

Org #

Org support is built in. Vale ignores code blocks, literal examples, code strings, and verbatim strings by default.

Code #

Vale supports linting source code comments in a number of languages (see the table below). You can assign a markup format to the content of the comments using the format association section:

StylesPath = styles
MinAlertLevel = suggestion

[formats]
# Rust + Markdown
rs = md

[*.{rs,md}]
BasedOnStyles = Vale

Once a markup format has been assigned, you can make use of all the supported features of that format (such as ignore patterns and comment-based configuration) in your source code comments.

Non-standard markup #

When working with non-HTML markup, you’ll probably find that there are certain non-standard sections of text you’d like to ignore. This is possible using BlockIgnores and TokenIgnores. Some examples:

{< file "hello.go" go >}
package main

func main() {
    fmt.Printf("hello, world\n")
}
{</ file >}

BlockIgnores = (?s) *({< file [^>]* >}.*?{</ ?file >})

$\begin{bmatrix} k & k & k \end{bmatrix}^T$

TokenIgnores = (\$+[^\n$]+\$+)

BlockIgnores = (?s) *(\.\. math::)

TokenIgnores = (:math:`.*`)