How to achieve italic display of code keywords in Neovim and WezTerm

Introduction#

I don't know if you have ever seen code in VIM where some parts are in regular font and some parts are in italics, like this:

I personally prefer this style:

When it comes to programming fonts, I prefer something thin and relatively condensed, but with a more informal, flowing and human style for standouts like comments and certain keywords.
From https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/

This article will use Neovim + Wezterm to achieve the italic style shown in the image above.

Installing the Font#

Click here to visit the victor-mono official website

Click here to download victor-mono

Download the font
Extract the ZIP file
Install the font files

For Windows, choose to install the ttf format. Since I only use the italic version of victor-mono, I only installed VictorMono-Italic.ttf and VictorMono-BoldItalic.ttf.

Configuring Wezterm#

Find the .wezterm.lua file in the current user directory, and create it if it doesn't exist.

Configure config.font and config.font_rule. Here, I use the following strategy: by default, use Cascadia Mono, and if it's italic, use Victor Mono.

config.font = wezterm.font_with_fallback {
	'Cascadia Mono',
	'DengXian'
}
config.font_rules = {
	{
	  intensity = 'Bold',
	  italic = true,
	  font = wezterm.font {
		family = 'Victor Mono',
		weight = 'Bold',
		style = 'Italic',
	  },
	},
	{
	  italic = true,
	  intensity = 'Half',
	  font = wezterm.font {
		family = 'Victor Mono',
		weight = 'DemiBold',
		style = 'Italic',
	  },
	},
	{
	  italic = true,
	  intensity = 'Normal',
	  font = wezterm.font {
		family = 'Victor Mono',
		style = 'Italic',
		weight = 'Bold',
	  },
	},
}

Configuring Neovim#

In Neovim, you need to use a theme that supports italic display. I use catppuccin, which can be used with lsp and tressitter to display different styles for specific syntax parts in the code, such as using italics for code keywords.

require("catppuccin").setup({       
  styles = {                        
    comments = { "bold" },          
    properties = { "bold" },        
    functions = { "bold" },         
    keywords = { "italic" },        
    operators = { "bold" },         
    conditionals = { "italic" },    
    loops = { "italic" },           
    booleans = { "bold", "italic" },
    numbers = {},                   
    types = {},                     
    strings = {},                   
    variables = {},                 
  },                                
}

Result#

Only the keyword parts are displayed in italics, while the rest remains normal.