# Highlight.js

Highlight.js highlights syntax in code examples on blogs, forums and
in fact on any web pages. It's very easy to use because it works 
automatically: finds blocks of code, detects a language, highlights it.

Autodetection can be fine tuned when it fails by itself (see "Heuristics").

## Installation and usage

The script is installed by linking to a single file and making a single
initialization call:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="highlight.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      initHighlightingOnLoad();
    </script>

Autodetection can work a bit slow if it includes too many languages and code
blocks are large. To speed up highlighting in this case you can pass to the
initialization function only those languages that you actually use on your pages:

    <script type="text/javascript">
      initHighlightingOnLoad('html', 'css');
    </script>

When called this way highlight.js will dynamically load appropriate language
files and thus will also weigh less than with the default set that includes all
languages implemented.

Then the script looks in your page for fragments `<pre><code>...</code></pre>`
that are used traditionally to mark up code examples. Their content is
marked up by logical pieces with defined class names. The classes are
used to actually style the code elements:

    .comment {
      color: gray;
    }

    .keyword {
      font-weight: bold;
    }

    .python .string {
      color: blue;
    }

    .html .atribute .value {
      color: green;
    }
    
You can use included sample.css as a starting point for you own style.

A full list of available classes is below ("Languages").

### WordPress plugin

Generally installing highlight.js in a [WordPress][wp] blog is no different
than for any other web page. However it can also be installed as a plugin.
This is useful if your blog is located on a shared hosting and you don't
have a permission to edit template and style files. Or it may be more convenient
to you this way. 

To install the plugin copy the whole directory with highlight.js to the 
WordPress plugins directory. After this you can activate and deactivate it
from the Plugins panel. There is also a page "highlight.js" under the Options
menu where you can set a list of languages and style rules. Insanely convenient :-)

[wp]: http://wordpress.org/


## Export

File export.html contains a little program that shows and allows to copy and paste 
an HTML code generated by the highlighter for any code snippet. This can be useful
in situations when one can't use the script itself on a site.


## Languages

This is a full list of available classes corresponding to languages' 
syntactic structures.

Python:
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string (of any type)
  comment          comment
  decorator        @-decorator for functions
  function         function header "def some_name(...):"
  class            class header "class SomeName(...):"
  title            name of a function or a class inside a header
  params           everything inside parentheses in a function's or class' header

Ruby:
    
  keyword          keyword
  string           string
  subst            in-string substitution (#{...})
  comment          comment
  function         function header "def some_name(...):"
  class            class header "class SomeName(...):"
  title            name of a function or a class inside a header
  symbol           symbol

Perl:
    
  keyword          keyword
  comment          comment
  number           number
  string           string
  regexp           regular expression
  sub              subroutine header (from "sub" till "{")
  variable         variable starting with "$", "%", "@"
  operator         operator
  pod              plain old doc

PHP:
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string (of any type)
  comment          comment
  phpdoc           phpdoc params in comments
  variable         variable starting with "$"

XML:
    
  tag              any tag from "<" till ">"
  comment          comment
  pi               processing instruction (<?php ... ?>)
  cdata            CDATA section
  attribute        attribute
  value            attribute's value

HTML:
    
  keyword          HTML tag
  tag              any tag from "<" till ">"
  comment          comment
  doctype          <!DOCTYPE ... > declaration
  attribute        tag's attribute with or without value
  value            attribute's value

CSS:
    
  keyword          HTML tag when in selectors, CSS keyword when in rules
  id               #some_name in selectors
  class            .some_name in selectors
  attr_selector    attribute selector (square brackets in a[href^=http://])
  comment          comment
  rules            everything from "{" till "}"
  value            property's value inside a rule, from ":" till ";" or
                   till the end of rule block

Django:

  keyword          HTML tag in HTML, default tags and default filters in templates
  tag              any tag from "<" till ">"
  comment          comment
  doctype          <!DOCTYPE ... > declaration
  attribute        tag's attribute with or withou value
  value            attribute's value
  template_tag     template tag {% .. %}
  variable         template variable {{ .. }}
  template_comment template comment, both {# .. #} and {% comment %}
  filter           filter from "|" till the next filter or the end of tag
  argument         filter argument

Javascript:
    
  keyword          keyword
  comment          comment
  number           number
  literal          special literal: "true", "false" and "null"
  string           string
  regexp           regular expression
  function         header of a function
  title            name of a function inside a header
  params           everything inside parentheses in a function's header

VBScript:
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string
  comment          comment
  built_in         built-in function

Delphi:
    
  keyword          keyword
  comment          comment (of any type)
  number           number
  string           string
  function         header of a function, procedure, constructor and destructor
  title            name of a function, procedure, constructor or destructor
                   inside a header
  params           everything inside parentheses in a function's header
  class            class' body from "= class" till "end;"

Java:
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string
  comment          commment
  annotaion        annotation
  javadoc          javadoc comment
  class            class header from "class" till "{"
  title            class name inside a header
  params           everything in parentheses inside a class header
  inheritance      keywords "extends" and "implements" inside class header

C++:
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string and character
  comment          comment
  preprocessor     preprocessor directive

RenderMan (RSL):
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string
  comment          comment
  preprocessor     preprocessor directive
  shader           sahder keywords
  shading          shading keywords
  built_in         built-in function

RenderMan (RIB):
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string
  comment          comment
  commands         command

SQL:
    
  keyword          keyword (mostly SQL'92 and SQL'99)
  number           number
  string           string (of any type: "..", '..', `..`)
  comment          comment
  aggregate        aggregate function

Smalltalk:

  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string
  comment          commment
  symbol           symbol
  array            array
  class            name of a class
  char             char
  localvars        block of local variables

Axapta:
    
  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string
  comment          commment
  class            class header from "class" till "{"
  title            class name inside a header
  params           everything in parentheses inside a class header
  inheritance      keywords "extends" and "implements" inside class header
  preprocessor     preprocessor directive

1C:

  keyword          keyword
  number           number
  string           string
  comment          commment
  function         header of function or procudure
  title            function name inside a header
  params           everything in parentheses inside a function header
  preprocessor     preprocessor directive

## Heuristics

Autodetection of a code's language is done with a simple heuristics:
the program tries to highlight a fragment with all available languages and
counts all syntactic structures that it finds along the way. The language
with greatest count wins.

This means that in short fragments the probability of an error is high 
(and it really happens sometimes). In this cases you can set the fragment's
language explicitly by assigning a class to the `<code>` element:

    <pre><code class="html">...</code></pre>
    
To disable highlighting of a fragment altogether use "no-highlight" class:

    <pre><code class="no-highlight">...</code></pre>

## Contacts

Version: 3.5
URL:     http://softwaremaniacs.org/soft/highlight/en/
Author:  Ivan Sagalaev (Maniac@SoftwareManiacs.Org)

For the license terms see LICENSE files.
For the list of contributors see AUTHORS.en.txt file.