organizing and pulling together syntax highlighting info

2 files changed, 58 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/doc/todo/syntax_highlighting.mdwn b/doc/todo/syntax_highlighting.mdwn
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e992cc514
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/todo/syntax_highlighting.mdwn
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+There's been a lot of work on contrib syntax highlighting plugins. One should be
+picked and added to ikiwiki core.
+
+Ideally, it should support both converting whole source files into wiki
+pages, as well as doing syntax highlighting as a preprocessor directive 
+(which is either passed the text, or reads it from a file).
+
+The big list of possibilities:
+
+* [[plugins/contrib/highlightcode]] uses [[cpan Syntax::Highlight::Engine::Kate]],
+  operates on whole source files only, has a few bugs (see
+  [here](http://u32.net/Highlight_Code_Plugin/), and needs to be updated to
+  support [[bugs/multiple_pages_with_same_name]].
+* [[cpan IkiWiki-Plugin-syntax]] only operates as a directive.
+  Interestingly, it supports multiple highlighting backends, including Kate
+  and Vim.
+* [[plugins/contrib/syntax]] only operates as a directive
+  ([[not_on_source_code_files|automatic_use_of_syntax_plugin_on_source_code_files]]),
+  and uses [[cpan Text::VimColor]].
+* [[plugins/contrib/sourcehighlight]] uses src-highlight, and operates on
+  whole source files only. Needs to be updated to
+  support [[bugs/multiple_pages_with_same_name]].
+* [[sourcecode|todo/automatic_use_of_syntax_plugin_on_source_code_files/discussion]]
+  also uses src-highlight, and operates on whole source files.
+  Has problems with [[bugs/multiple_pages_with_same_name]].
+
+General problems:
+
+* Using non-perl syntax highlighting backends is slow. I'd prefer either
+  using a perl module, or a multiple-backend solution that can use a perl
+  module as one option.
+* Currently no single plugin supports both modes of operation (directive
+  and whole source file to page).
+* Nothing seems to support 
+  [[wiki-formatted_comments|wiki-formatted_comments_with_syntax_plugin]]
+  inside source files. Doing this probably means post-processing the 
+  results of the highlighting engine, to find places where it's highlighted
+  comments, and then running them through the ikiwiki rendering pipeline.
+  This seems fairly doable with [[cpan Syntax::Highlight::Engine::Kate]],
+  at least.
+* The whole-file plugins tend to have a problem that things that look like
+  wikilinks in the source code get munged into links by ikiwiki, which can
+  have confusing results. Similar problem with preprocessor directives.
+* The whole-file plugins all get confused if there is a `foo.c` and a `foo.h`.
+  This is trivially fixable now by passing the keepextension option when
+  registering the htmlize hooks, though.
+* Whole-file plugins register a bunch of htmlize hooks. The wacky thing
+  about it is that, when creating a new page, you can then pick "c" or
+  "h" or "pl" etc from the dropdown that normally has "mdwn" etc in it.
+  Is this a bug, or a feature? (Even if a feature, plugins with many
+  extensions make the dropdown unusable..)
+* The per page highlighters can't handle "Makefile", or other files
+  without a significant extension.
+* 
diff --git a/doc/todo/wiki-formatted_comments_with_syntax_plugin.mdwn b/doc/todo/wiki-formatted_comments_with_syntax_plugin.mdwn
index 08ca61b0c..a5244c9ef 100644
--- a/doc/todo/wiki-formatted_comments_with_syntax_plugin.mdwn
+++ b/doc/todo/wiki-formatted_comments_with_syntax_plugin.mdwn
@@ -1 +1,4 @@
-[[Wishlist]] item: I'd love to see the ability to optionally switch back to wiki syntax within the comments of code pretty-printed with the [[plugins/contrib/syntax]] plugin.  This would allow the use of links and formatting in comments.
+[[Wishlist]] item: I'd love to see the ability to optionally switch back to
+wiki syntax within the comments of code pretty-printed with the
+[[plugins/contrib/syntax]] plugin.  This would allow the use of links and
+formatting in comments.