Highlight

Highlight is an open source, free, customizable, multiplatform and easy-to-use graphical software implemented in Qt and designed from the offset to be used for converting source code to various popular web formats, including HTML, SVG, RTF, XHTML 1.1, TeX, LaTeX, BBCode, as well as terminal escape sequences.

Features at a glance

With Highlight, users will be able to highlights keywords, strings, comments, preprocessor directives, types, numbers, operators and escape sequences. It allows you to reformat and indent C++, C, C# and Java source code, to configure output of line numbers, and define sytax elements as plain string lists or regular expressions.

Key features include support for over 175 programming languages, over 80 highlighting color themes, support for customizing keyword groups, wrapping of long lines, as well as referenced stylesheet file support for the SVG, HTML, TeX and LaTeX output. The (X)HTML output is formatted by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

All the configuration files of Highlight are Lua scripts, and its functionality may be enhanced with plugin scripts. The application recognizes nested languages within a single file, and features a command-line interface, a modern graphical user interface and library builds.

Under the hood, supported operating systems and availability

Highlight is a cross-platform application, written in the C++ programming language and using the Qt GUI toolkit for its graphical user interface. It has been successfully tested on various GNU/Linux distributions where the Qt framework is available, as well as on the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

The software is available for download for Linux users only as a bz2 archive, which contains the application’s source code, so you can optimize it for a specific architecture and operating system. Please note that both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms are supported at this time by the Highlight app.

What is new in this release:

• fixed HL_OUTPUT in Lua state for HL_FORMAT_XHTML and HL_FORMAT_TRUECOLOR values
• fixed lib-shared make target
• updated astyle code to release 3.1.0 beta
• added Polygen and EBNF2 syntax definitions (thanks to Tristano Ajmone)
• added pywal terminal colouring template in extras/pywal
• added reformatting style ratliff (replaces banner)
• added extras/langDefs-resources/cleanslate.lang (thanks to Tristano Ajmone)
• improved Perl6 compatibility
• improved PHP string interpolation
• improved Haskell definition (https://github.com/andre-simon/highlight/pull/52)
• CLI: added --canvas option to define background color padding in ANSI output (https://github.com/andre-simon/highlight/issues/40)
• GUI: added French translation (thanks to Antoine Belvire)
• GUI: added Scripts tab (suggested by Tristano Ajmone)
• GUI: minor bugfixes

What is new in version :

• fixed Ruby string parsing (thanks to Jens Schleusener)
• fixed segfault on sparc64 (patch by James Clarke)
• fixed PureBasic definition (https://github.com/andre-simon/highlight/issues/25)
• added CMake definition (https://github.com/andre-simon/highlight/issues/20)
• added email definition (https://github.com/andre-simon/highlight/issues/21)
• linked scm suffix to lisp definition (https://github.com/andre-simon/highlight/issues/22)
• W32 CLI: support HIGHLIGHT_DATADIR and --data-dir options (https://github.com/andre-simon/highlight/issues/24)
• revised documentation

What is new in version 3.36:

• fixed code folding plugin to support more Ruby conditional modifiers (thanks to Jens Schleusener)
• fixed Perl quoted string highlighting (thanks to Jens Schleusener)
• added new GeneratorOverride syntax definition parameter
• added Filenames parameter in filetypes.conf to assign input filenames to syntax types (suggested by Andy)
• added FASM definition and edit-fasm theme (thanks to Tristano Ajmone)
• added outhtml_ie7_webctrl plug-in (suggested by Tristano Ajmone)
• GUI: file extensions can be configured for multiple languages, triggers syntax selection prompt
• GUI: added Italian translation (thanks to Tristano Ajmone)

What is new in version 3.24:

• Coloured output in HTML, XHTML, RTF, ODT, TeX, LaTeX, SVG and BBCode format
• Supports 195 programming languages
• Includes 80 colour themes
• Syntax elements are defined as regular expressions or plain string lists
• Customizable keyword groups
• Recognition of nested languages
• Reformatting and indentation of C, C++, C# and Java source code
• Language definitions and themes are Lua scripts
• Plug-In interface to tweak syntax parsing and coloring
• CLI, GUI and Lib builds available
• Platform independent

What is new in version 3.23:

• added rs.lang
• added conf.lang (thanks to Victor Ananjevsky)
• added some extensions in filetypes.conf (patch by Victor Ananjevsky)
• fixed Matlab definition and style (thanks to Justin Pearson)
• CLI: fixed --list-scripts with unknown argument (thanks to Jens Schleusener)

What is new in version 3.22:

• updated astyle code to release 2.05.1
• fixed shebang recognition (thanks to Victor Ananjevsky)
• GUI: added option to define line numbering start

What is new in version 3.21:

• added support for LESS, SASS and Stylus CSS processors (suggested by Marcel Bischoff)
• added support for Lua 5.3, removed LUA52 makefile option
• fixed heredoc matching in perl.lang (thanks to cornucopia)
• fixed Haskell lang (thanks to Daan Michiels)
• fixed RNC lang (thanks to Daan Michiels)
• fixed regex pattern in js.lang

What is new in version 3.20:

• updated astyle code to release 2.05
• added astyle reformatting style vtk

What is new in version 3.19:

• Coloured output in HTML, XHTML, RTF, ODT, TeX, LaTeX, SVG and BBCode format
• Supports 180 programming languages
• Includes 80 colour themes
• Syntax elements are defined as regular expressions or plain string lists
• Customizable keyword groups
• Recognition of nested languages
• Reformatting and indentation of C, C++, C# and Java source code
• Language definitions and themes are Lua scripts
• Plug-In interface to tweak syntax parsing and coloring
• CLI, GUI and Lib builds available
• Platform independent

What is new in version 3.17:

• Updated astyle code to release 2.04
• Added astyle reformatting styles google, pico and lisp
• Improved raw string parsing in cs.lang (patch by smdn.jp)
• Added regex recognition in js.lang (patch by Troy Sankey)
• Added PDF language definition (thanks to Roland Hieber)

What is new in version 3.16:

• updated astyle code to release 2.03
• added heredoc string literal parsing for Lisp, Perl, PHP, Ruby and Bash
• revised several language definitions
• added DataDir::searchDataDir for the Perl SWIG bindings (thanks to David Bremner)
• added SWIG PHP binding (patch by G. Wijaya)

What is new in version 3.15:

• updated Diluculum code to release 1.0 (support of Lua 5.2)
• patched Diluculum to support Lua 5.1 and 5.2
• added support for Yang (thanks to A. Aniruddha)
• fixed Ruby definitions

What is new in version 3.14:

• added HeaderInjection and FooterInjection variables for syntax plug-ins
• fixed handling of CRLF files on Linux (suggested by William Bell)
• replaced single data directory by a dynamic config file search; see README (suggested by Daniel)
• added plug-ins outhtml_parantheses_matcher.lua, outhtml_keyword_matcher.lua
• CLI: added --list-scripts option
• CLI: marked --data-dir, --list-langs, --list-themes options as deprecated
• CLI: removed --add-config-dir option

What is new in version 3.13:

• Coloured output in HTML, XHTML, RTF, ODT, TeX, LaTeX, SVG and BBCode format
• Supports 180 programming languages
• Includes 80 colour themes
• Syntax elements are defined as regular expressions or plain string lists
• Customizable keyword groups
• Recognition of nested languages
• Reformatting and indentation of C, C++, C# and Java source code
• Language definitions and themes are Lua scripts
• Plug-In interface to tweak syntax parsing and coloring
• CLI, GUI and Lib builds available
• Platform independent

What is new in version 3.12:

• CSS class names may now be omitted in HTML output.
• Highlighting of string interpolation has been added.
• Dart and TypeScript are supported.
• The SWIG module example code has been fixed.

What is new in version 3.11:

• The included regex parser was replaced by Boost xpressive.
• Relax NG recognition was improved.
• Several minor bugs were fixed.

What is new in version 3.9:

• The plug-in interface was enhanced to allow output text manipulation.
• Some plug-ins were added that insert hyperlinks to several online API sites in HTML, LaTeX, and RTF output.
• Perl and N3 language definitions were improved.
• Some minor bugs were fixed.

What is new in version 3.8:

• The astyle lib was updated.
• A memory leak in astyle was fixed.
• Shebang and file suffix recognition were improved.

What is new in version 3.7:

• added support for Biferno (thanks to Sandro Bilbeisi)
• added support for RPL (thanks to Frank Seidinger)
• added support for Ceylon
• fixed Ruby definition
• HTML font string may contain a list of fonts, which is not enclosed in quotes (suggested by Sebastiano Poggi)
• GUI: added --portable command line option to save config files in the current working directory instead of the user directory (suggested by Royi Avital)
• GUI: fixed some language mappings

What is new in version 3.6:

• updated astyle code to release 2.02
• fixed --force option (thanks to Stefan Buhler)

What is new in version 3.5:

• updated astyle code to release 2.02
• fixed --force option (thanks to Stefan Buhler)

What is new in version 3.4:

• added support for ABC, Algol, AS/400 CL, BCPL, Limbo, Gambas, JavaFX, RPG, Transact-SQL, PL/Perl, PL/Tcl, PL/Python, Charmm
• fixed web plugins (Serendipity, DokuWiki, Wordpress)
• fixed BBCode closing tag order
• GUI: Updated Czech translation (thanks to Pavel Fric)

What is new in version 3.2:

• added plugin function AddKeyword (suggested by Michael Serrano)
• language definitions are cached instead of being reloaded if input syntax changes
• added keyword group ID parameter to the plugin function OnStateChange
• added plugin script bash_functions.lua
• added theme description in output style's comment
• added enum and union keywords in c.lang (thanks to Thiago)
• added dl linking flag in Makefile to fix Debian build error (thanks to Michael Serrano)
• added NDEBUG flag in makefile to disable asserts

What is new in version 3.1:

• updated Diluculum to version 0.5.3
• fixed README -fixed conversion without highlighting (--syntax txt)
• fixed msxml definition (thanks to Andrei Rosca)
• added edit-flashdevelop theme (thanks to Andrei Rosca)
• CLI: fixed minor bugs

What is new in version 3.1:

• This release enables loading of multiple plugins.
• It adds support for MXML and fixed HTML, XML, CSS, Actionscript, and JavaScript definitions.
• Some VIM color themes have been converted.

What is new in version 3.0:

• language definitions, themes, filetypes.conf were converted to Lua scripts (try examples/*2to3.py to convert old files)
• added plugin option to enable user scripts
• renamed *.style files to *.theme
• moved include files from src/core to src/include
• moved examples/plugins to examples/web_plugins
• renamed linenumbers to linenumbers
• renamed several language definitions and themes
• fixed several string delimiter issues (Ruby, Lua)
• changed default theme for xterm256 output to editvimdark
• changed short options: O is outformat, d is outdir, T is doctitle
• disabled markline feature
• disabled adddatadir feature
• disabled separate output format options (use outformat instead)
• disabled XML output (use SVG or XHTML)
• New dependencies: Lua5.1devel, Boost Headers (Bind)

What is new in version 2.16:

• updated astyle code to release 1.24
• added indentation styles 1tbs and horstmann
• added --no-trailing-nl switch (suggested by Adiel Mittmann)
• added Modula2 definition (thanks to Benjamin Kowarsch)
• added EBNF definition (thanks to Mate Ory)
• added ABNF, AutoHotKey, BBCode and Clean language definitions
• updated C++ definition to support C++0x syntax
• added StartupNotify switch in desktop file (patch by Jochen Schmitt)

What is new in version 2.15:

• improved HTML nested language patterns (thanks to Simone)
• improved Rexx and PL1 definitions (thabnks to Robert Prins)
• added support for NXC and NBC
• GUI: added copy and paste support (thanks to Torsten Flamminger)
• GUI: fixed preview of UTF-8 input

What is new in version 2.13:

• SVG output and minor bugs in the optional GUI were fixed.

What is new in version 2.12:

• Recognition of nested languages was added (i.e. Pascal+Assembly or HTML+PHP+JS+CSS).
• Support for F# and haXe was added.
• Several language definitions were improved.
• Minor bugs were fixed.

What is new in version 2.10:

• New license: GPLv3 replaced GPLv2
• New indent styles: Banner, Stroustrup, Whitesmith
• New jEdit theme (see below)
• Added support for ATS, CHILL, Inno Setup, Interactive Data Language, INTERLIS, Mercury, NetRexx, Oz, Rebol and Zonnon
• Improved definitions of RPM Spec, Prolog, Pike, Oberon, Nice, Java, Lisp, Lua, Haskell, C# and SML
• Bugfix CR parsing for MacOS

What is new in version 2.8:

• new user interface
• improved LaTeX output
• improved SWIG support

What is new in version 2.7:

• fixed VHDL and XML definitions
• added support for Clojure
• several bugs were fixed

What is new in version 2.6.14:

• HTML output may include metainformation from ctags files.
• Output formatting command line options have been harmonized with GNU source-highlight.
• ADA95, C#, Eiffel, Fortran, TCL, and Bash definitions have been fixed.
• Support for Vala was added.

Requirements:

• Qt
• wxWidgets