Timeline for Goodbye, Prettify. Hello highlight.js! Swapping out our Syntax Highlighter
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
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| Oct 8, 2020 at 13:52 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | Anyway, splitting the C and C++ tokenisers would allow us to get at least C 100% right, and I’m working on it. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 13:52 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @Antti I’m well aware of the impossibility of tokenising C++ code. But, contrary to what you’ve said, many modern syntax highlighters try to assign meaning to tokens without parsing. GitHub’s syntax highlighter and VS Code’s (parse-less mode), in particular, fundamentally have the same issue; they do a slightly better job but they still get it wrong (see second link). | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 11:42 | comment | added | Antti Haapala |
@KonradRudolph most of those that do, also parse the source code and colour according to the AST not just tokens. In C++ especially it is impossible to get right without parsing the entire source code. int a(x) is a function declaration if x is a type, it is a variable declaration with a constructor call if x is an object, and you know this only by processing all the includes.
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| Oct 5, 2020 at 8:54 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph |
Actually I’ve submitted a new issue for this specific bug, since none of the existing issues directly address it: github.com/highlightjs/highlight.js/issues/2736 — As a further explanation, highlight.js does not try to be context free (and, contrary to your assertion, Antti, nor do many other widespread highlighters). In particular, it attempts to recognise declarations of functions and classes/structs, and highlight them separately. This improves readability, it’s just hard to get right. Currently it merely looks for the presence of a struct keyword, which is insufficient.
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| Oct 4, 2020 at 11:07 | comment | added | Rob Grant | Thanks; makes sense. I would definitely say that if SO are using this lib instead of writing their own highlighter, it's on them to add this support if they want their syntax highlighting to work. | |
| Oct 2, 2020 at 10:16 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @RobGrant Help wanted from the lib’s perspective. Of course SO would want this fixed, but I’m not seeing them devote any development resources towards highlight.js at the moment. | |
| Oct 2, 2020 at 10:03 | comment | added | Rob Grant | @KonradRudolph Why would SO not want this fixed? Or do you mean it's help wanted from the lib's perspective? | |
| Sep 30, 2020 at 10:38 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | This is an open issue: splitting C and C++ should happen (and C++ also needs to be drastically improved). As with pretty much all language-level improvements of the highlighter, this is “help wanted”, i.e. probably won’t happen without somebody submitting a pull request. | |
| Sep 30, 2020 at 7:55 | history | edited | Antti Haapala | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Sep 29, 2020 at 19:53 | history | edited | Antti Haapala | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Sep 29, 2020 at 19:44 | history | edited | Antti Haapala | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Sep 29, 2020 at 19:22 | history | answered | Antti Haapala | CC BY-SA 4.0 |