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  • 31
    "we get enough language requests that if we added them all, we'd have a long list and a big problem." Do you though? Looking at syntax-highlighting, this is the top language request — ever. The only other currently outstanding language request with more than 15 votes here is Fortran (32 votes, 11k SO questions).
    – mbauman
    Commented Aug 12, 2021 at 20:24
  • 13
    It's also worth noting that the client-side performance was discussed in now-deleted comments — including more comments by the highlights.js maintainer. archive.is/4CBRZ
    – mbauman
    Commented Aug 16, 2021 at 20:38
  • 17
    "While any one language might be a good addition, we get enough language requests that if we added them all, we'd have a long list and a big problem." But you don't have to add every language that gets requested. You can look at the popularity of the language based on the StackOverflow activity and make a decision. Here, there is a language that is significantly more active than many others that already have highlighting. If there is a strong need to keep the size of the highlight file constant, you could remove support for one of the languages that are now very inacticve.
    – Kristoffer Carlsson
    Commented Sep 23, 2021 at 7:46
  • 9
    What criteria do you use to decide which languages get added? It seems that by any reasonable metric, Julia should be added!
    – a06e
    Commented Dec 6, 2021 at 14:52
  • 1
    @Catija Do you have an update on the syntax highlighting progress? There are several languages that need it. For example, F# is still not supported.
    – bmitc
    Commented Apr 10, 2022 at 6:02
  • 1
    @bmitc There's no change and, as far as I'm aware, no immediate plans to work on this.
    – Catija
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 14:36
  • 5
    It's worth noting that the lack of supported languages is ten times worse due to the known misimplementation of Highlights.js. Stop guessing/auto-detecting a language when you KNOW it will be incorrect
    – mbauman
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 16:08
  • 2
    hi @Catija, is there any news on this? Because I asked the same question about PowerShell, which I'd hope is one of those "really popular, newer languages" since it's now more popular than bash in terms of SO Qs. insights.stackoverflow.com/…
    – Pxtl
    Commented Aug 9, 2023 at 17:29
  • 1
    Hey @Pxtl I don't have any additional updates at this point. I can tell that there are likely several languages that would benefit from expansion of the list of languages we offer highlighting for. We acknowledged this even when I wrote this answer two years ago but the organization internally has morphed quite a bit from when I posted and the team that would have done the work to investigate this has different priorities than they did at the time.
    – Catija
    Commented Aug 9, 2023 at 19:18
  • 2
    I think this is a poor reason. I can't imagine it being too too difficult to have the server keep track of what languages are used in a post, and then only send specific highlighting scripts as needed, and also have the client request more if inline edits happen that require them.
    – starball
    Commented Nov 3, 2023 at 2:51