There's been a lot of work on contrib syntax highlighting plugins. One should be
picked and added to ikiwiki core.
+> I'm calling this [[done]] since I added the [[plugins/highlight]]
+> plugin. There are some unresolved issues touched on here,
+> but they either have the own other bug reports, or are documented
+> as semi-features in the docs to the plugin. --[[Joey]]
+
We want to support both converting whole source files into wiki
pages, as well as doing syntax highlighting as a preprocessor directive
(which is either passed the text, or reads it from a file). But,
* [[plugins/contrib/syntax]] only operates as a directive
([[not_on_source_code_files|automatic_use_of_syntax_plugin_on_source_code_files]]),
and uses [[!cpan Text::VimColor]].
-* [[plugins/contrib/sourcehighlight]] uses src-highlight, and operates on
+* [[plugins/contrib/sourcehighlight]] uses source-highlight, and operates on
whole source files only. Needs to be updated to
support [[bugs/multiple_pages_with_same_name]].
* [[sourcecode|todo/automatic_use_of_syntax_plugin_on_source_code_files/discussion]]
- also uses src-highlight, and operates on whole source files.
+ also uses source-highlight, and operates on whole source files.
Updated to work with the fix for [[bugs/multiple_pages_with_same_name]]. Untested with files with no extension, e.g. `Makefile`.
-* [[users/jasonblevins]]'s code plugin uses src-highlight, and supports both
- while file and directive use.
+* [[users/jasonblevins]]'s code plugin uses source-highlight, and supports both
+ whole file and directive use.
* [hlsimple](http://pivot.cs.unb.ca/git/?p=ikiplugins.git;a=blob_plain;f=IkiWiki/Plugin/hlsimple.pm;hb=HEAD) is a wrapper for the the perl module [[!cpan Syntax::Highlight::Engine::Simple]]. This is pure perl, pretty simple, uses css. It ought to be pretty fast (according to the author, and just because it is not external).
On the other hand, there are not many predefined languages yet. Defining language syntaxes is about as much
work as source-highlight, but in perl. I plan to package the base module for debian. Perhaps after the author
releases the 5 or 6 language definitions he has running on his web site, it might be suitable for inclusion in ikiwiki. [[DavidBremner]]
+* [[plugins/highlight]] uses [highlight](http://www.andre-simon.de) via
+ its swig bindings. It optionally supports whole files, but also
+ integrates with the format directive to allow formatting of *any* of
+ highlight's supported formats. (For whole files, it uses either
+ keepextension or noextension, as appropriate for the type of file.)
+
## General problems / requirements
-* Using non-perl syntax highlighting backends is slow. I'd prefer either
- using a perl module, or a multiple-backend solution that can use a perl
- module as one option. (Or, if there's a great highlighter python module,
- we could use an external plugin..)
+* Using non-perl syntax highlighting backends is slower. All things equal,
+ I'd prefer either using a perl module, or a multiple-backend solution that
+ can use a perl module as one option. (Or, if there's a great highlighter
+ python module, we could use an external plugin..)
+
+ Of course, some perl modules are also rather slow.. Kate, for example
+ can only process about 33 lines of C code, or 14 lines of
+ debian/changelog per second. That's **30 times slower than markdown**!
+
+ By comparison, source-highlight can do about 5000 lines of C code per
+ second... And launching the program 100 times on an empty file takes about
+ 5 seconds, which isn't bad. And, it has a C++ library, which it
+ seems likely perl bindings could be written for, to eliminate
+ even that overhead.
+ > [highlight](http://www.andre-simon.de) has similar features to source-highlight, and swig bindings
+ > that should make it trivial in principle to call from perl. I like highlight a bit better because
+ > it has a pass-through feature that I find very useful. My memory is unfortunately a bit fuzzy as to how
+ > well the swig bindings work. [[DavidBremner]]
+
* Engines that already support a wide variety of file types are of
course preferred. If the engine doesn't support a particular type
of file, it could fall back to doing something simple like
adding line numbers. (IkiWiki-Plugin-syntax does this.)
+* XHTML output.
* Emitting html that uses CSS to control the display is preferred,
- since it allows for easy user customization.
+ since it allows for easy user customization. (Engine::Simple does
+ this; Kate can be configured to do it; source-highlight can be
+ made to do it via the switches `--css /dev/null --no-doc`)
* Nothing seems to support
[[wiki-formatted_comments|wiki-formatted_comments_with_syntax_plugin]]
inside source files. Doing this probably means post-processing the
* The whole-file plugins all get confused if there is a `foo.c` and a `foo.h`.
This is trivially fixable now by passing the keepextension option when
- registering the htmlize hooks, though. That also should handle the
+ registering the htmlize hooks, though. There's also a noextension option
+ that should handle the
case of source files with names that do not contain an extension (ie,
"Makefile") -- in this case you just register the while filename
in the htmlize hook.
Perhaps the thing to do here is to use the new `longname` parameter to
the format hook, to give them all names that will group together at or
- near the end of the list. Ie: "Syntax: perl", "Syntax: C", etc.
-
-## format directive and comments
-
-Hmm, the [[ikiwiki/directive/format]] directive would also allow comments
-inside source files to have mdwn embedded in them, without making the use
-of mdwn a special case, or needing to postprocess the syntax highlighter
-output to find comments.
-
- /* \[[!format mdwn """
-
- This is a comment in my C file. You can use mdwn in here.
-
- """]] */
-
-Note that this assumes that directives are expanded in source files,
-which has its own set of problems.
+ near the end of the list. Ie: "Syntax: perl", "Source code: c", etc.