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Syntax highlighting

mntn mntn at mntn.xyz

Mon Sep 13 16:17:46 BST 2021

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Thanks, I read over it and the deeper linked conversations. It looks like people have been considering this from a number of angles. It does seem like a lot of people were suggesting changes to the spec; I don't want to add anything new! Gemini is fine as it is.

I am confident that the best option is just to use the name of the language as the alt text. Alt text of "javascript" is fairly clear as to what follows in the preformatted text block--so it still works as alt text--and a syntax highlighter could use that hint for parsing the text and highlighting the code. A properly designed syntax highlighter will give up and fail quietly/safely if it can't parse the code for whatever reason, say if it's actually a poem titled "javascript" instead of code.

Clients may want to ignore anything following a space or punctuation, so alt text could be even more descriptive, such as "javascript: excerpt from example.js" or "HTML example."

This would seem to be compatible with the spec as it stands, it doesn't munge the alt text, and it doesn't add any new requirements for clients.

September 12, 2021 5:57 PM, "Alexis" <flexibeast at gmail.com> wrote:

mntn at mntn.xyz writes:

I'm interested in opinions on syntax highlighting for

preformatted

text. Gemini has a lot of potential for distraction-free

developer

reference (I just discovered that godocs.io works in Gemini!)

and

syntax highlighting would help.

[...]

The Gemtext spec would seem to have no problem with this, as the

first

line is considered "alt text" and it is up to the client to

determine

both what should be done with it and how it should affect the

presentation. But I wanted to put this out there to get a

broader

perspective.

There was a thread on this topic some months back:

https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2021/005732.html

Alexis.