Syntax highlighting

The scripts package contains classes which allows to add syntax highlighting to text content.

Supported syntaxes

The default supported syntaxes with syntax highlighting^[1]

Except for the text files syntax, which has no syntax highlighting

are:

Supported syntaxes

Syntax	Name	Alternate names	Extensions
text files[2] This syntax is for plain text documents. It has no syntax highlighting	text	-	txt
batch files[3] They are Windows bat files	batch	bat	-
C++ files	c++	cpp	cpp, cc, hpp
C# files	csharp	c#	cs
C files	c	C	c, h
fortran files	fortran	-	for, f, ftn, fpp, f90,f95, f03, f08
html files	html	-	html, htm
idl declarations	idl	IDL	idl
JavaScript files	jscript	js, javascript	js
JSON files[4] JSON files are valid JavaScript files, so the syntax for these files is the same	json	-	json
Java files	java	-	java
Groovy files[5] Groovy files are presented by default with the same syntax as Java files, though the syntax can be overriden by syntax packs	groovy	-	groovy, gvy, gy, gsh
makefiles	make	-	make
php files	php	-	php
properties files	props	properties	properties
Python files	python	py	py
SQL files	sql	SQL	sql
T-SQL files	tsql	T-SQL	tsql
shell scripts[6] they are Unix or Linux shell scripts	shell	bash	bash, sh
XML files	xml	dtd, DTD, xsd, xsl	xml, xsd, xsl, xul, svg, xaml, scxml, fxml, rdf, vxml, wsdl, dae, owl
SPARQL files	sparql	-	sparql
turtle files	turtle	ttl	ttl
TeX files	tex	-	tex
xpath files	xpath	-	xpath
patch files	patch	-	patch
eiffel files	eiffel	-	e
manifest files[7] it is Java manifest file	manifest	-	mf
css files	css	-	stylesheet
csv files[8] Uses commas as delimiters	csv	-	csv
csv2 files[9] Uses semi-colons as delimiters	csv2	-	-

The definition of the syntaxes is defined in the following XML file^[10]

See the structure of the syntax file for more information on how this file is specified

Getting a default syntax

The SyntaxMapper.createDefaultTokenMarker() method allows to get a default TokenMarker.

It is possible to customize which TokenMarker will be returned by this method by calling the SyntaxMapper.setDefaultSyntax(String) method.

Getting a syntax

The code managing the syntax highlighting for a syntax is specified by subclasses of the TokenMarker class. The built-in TokenMarkers are defined in the tokenmarkers package.

There are two ways to create a TokenMarker for a syntax:

• Either create a new one directly using one of the classes in the tokenmarkers package
• Or using the SyntaxMapper class to create the TokenMarker associated with a syntax name or file extension

Example

To get the TokenMarker for the java syntax, you can either do:

      TokenMarker tk = new JavaTokenMarker();

or:

      SyntaxMapper mapper = SyntaxMapper.getInstance();
      TokenMarker tk = mapper.createTokenMarker("java");

It is also possible to create a TokenMarker associated with a file extension. For example:

      SyntaxMapper mapper = SyntaxMapper.getInstance();
      Syntax syntax = mapper.getSyntaxForExtension("htm");
      TokenMarker tk = syntax.createTokenMarker();

Adding a syntax pack

It is possible to support other syntaxes by calling the SyntaxMapper.installSyntaxPack(URL, boolean) method.

The jEditor-syntaxes.jar jar file, released with the library, provides syntaxes for the following languages:

• povray
• Ruby
• Groovy

Applying a syntax to a Document

The SyntaxTokenizer class allows to apply a syntax to any Document to produce a StyledDocument.

Note that it is possible to add a syntax to a StyledDocument. In that case the font and color of the input Document will be lost, but the following attributes will be kept in the result:

• Background color of the text
• Underline
• Strikethrough
• Bold
• Italic
• Font family

Example

      Document doc = ...
      SyntaxTokenizer tokenizer = new SyntaxTokenizer("java");
      StyledDocument styledDoc = tokenizer.applySyntax(doc);

Iterating on a SyntaxDocument

It is possible to iterate through the tokens in a SyntaxDocument:

• The method TextUtilities.getWord(SyntaxDocument, int) allows to get the Word at a specified offset in the Document
• The methods Word.getNextWord(boolean) and Word.getPreviousWord(boolean) allows to get the next or previous Word of an existing Word