from http://tips.webdesign10.com/vim/vim-syntax-highlighting
2007, October 27 - 2:38pm — Webmaster Tips
If you are working on files with unusual extensions and want to have vim add a certain type of syntax highlighting, you can edit your .vimrc file to recognize new file extensions.
First, be sure that your vim has syntax highlighting enabled. You can add this to your .vimrc file to always turn on syntax highlighting:
" Switch syntax highlighting on, when the terminal has colors
" Also switch on highlighting the last used search pattern.
if &t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
syntax on
set hlsearch
endif
Here is an example from CakePHP , which uses PHP in files with the extension .thtml:
You could add the following line to have vim highlight .thtml files as XML files. I like having Vim treat .thtml files as XML files because much of the content of the files is XML (XHTML):
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.thtml setfiletype xml
I prefer the XML settings because the xmledit plugin for vim gives you extra features when editing xml (or xhtml) files.