Syntax Highlighter for Java

Question

As you know there is a Syntax highlighter for PHP called GeSHi which supports a great number of Programming Languages or Code formats.

However, I couldn't find such a library for Java which supports programming languages that I need (ADA, ASP, BNF, Bash, Brainfuck, C, C++, C#, CSS, Cobol, ColdFusion, D, Fortran, Haskell, HTML, INI (Config), Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Make, Objective C, PASCAL, Perl, PHP, PLSQL, Prolog, Python, Ruby, Scheme, SQL, VB.NET, Verilog, VHDL, Visual Basic, XML.)

Do you know one or should I prefer inefficient way which is retrieving the highlighted code from a remote PHP server via http transaction? Any ideas?

Thanks.

Answer 1

A couple of highlighters that work really well are:

• highlight.js
• prettify.js

Both are easy to implement client side, and support a wide variety of languages. They also have a handsome range of css themes that make the code look like it does in your favorite editor.

Answer 2

You could use Pygments through Jython. Won't be as fast as a Java solution, but much faster than interacting with a remote server.

Barring that, you could run Geshi locally and pipe source code through it, that would also beat an HTTP round trip.

Answer 3

Have a look at JHighlighter or jEdit Syntax Package. All mentioned languages aren't supported out of the box. However, you have the sources, so I guess it should be possible to add language support.

Not a direct answer but, if client-side syntax highlighting is an option, the SyntaxHighlighter library from Alex Gorbatchev is an awesome javascript library, supports lots of languages and is highly extensible.

Answer 4

There is a port of prettify.js for Java: java-prettify.

It can be used to produce HTML (computed in Java), as I discussed here: Use the java-prettify parser to create HTML

Answer 5

jedit is a text editor with syntax highlighting support for some 170+ languages via "modes". It also allows you to specify your own syntaxes. You can use the StandaloneTextArea component in your own application as follows:

• Extract source (eg: jedit4.3source.tar.bz2 to d:\source\jedit)

• Use ant to copy all the textarea files to ..\textarea eg:

  D:\Source\jedit\jEdit> ant prepare-textArea

• However, it misses the file BufferUndoListener.java. Copy this manually by executing

  D:\Source\jedit\jEdit> copy org\gjt\sp\jedit\buffer\BufferUndoListener.java ..\textarea\src\org\gjt\sp\jedit\buffer\

• In Eclipse create a Java Project from existing source in the directory D:\Source\jedit\textarea

• Navigate to org.gjt.sp.jedit.textarea.StandaloneTextArea.java
• Change the line

mode.setProperty("file","modes/xml.xml");

to

mode.setProperty("file","src/modes/xml.xml");

• Run. Copy and paste an XML into the editor and see the syntax highlighting is working.

Answer 6

Two related questions:

What code highlighting libs are there for Java? Where can I find a syntax highlighting library for Java?

And one library I found: http://colorer.sourceforge.net/