vim - How do I tidy up an HTML file's indentation in VI?

Question

How do I fix the indentation of his huge html files which was all messed up?

I tried the usual "gg=G command, which is what I use to fix the indentation of code files. However, it didn't seem to work right on HTML files. It simply removed all the formatting.

I also tried setting :filetype = xml, to see if tricking it into thinking this was an XML file would help but it still didn't do it.

Answer 1

There's several things that all need to be in place. Just to summarize them all in one location:

Set the following option:

:filetype indent on
:set filetype=html           # abbrev -  :set ft=html
:set smartindent             # abbrev -  :set si

Then either move the cursor to the top of the file and indent to the end: gg =G
Or select the desired text to indent and hit = to indent it.