google-research/dex-lang

Portable regex-based syntax highlighting

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#176 opened on Jul 27, 2020

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good first issuetooling / editors

Description

A bit of syntax highlighting goes a long way towards making things more readable. Right now we have a little emacs mode and an independent syntax highlighter for the HTML renderings using parser combinators. Does anyone know of a portable solution that lets us define a bunch of regexes and generate modes for vim, emacs, sublime etc?

Contributor guide

Tech stack
None
Domain
toolingdeveloper experience
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
basic knowledge of regexfamiliarity with editor configuration
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
25
Research direction
Investigate existing portable syntax highlighting solutions that generate modes for multiple editors (vim, emacs, sublime) from a single regex based definition. Check discussions in the issue for any suggested tools or approaches. Look at the referenced files (dex.el and RenderHtml.hs) to understand current highlighting logic. Consider whether tree sitter or similar grammar based tools could be adapted for the Dex language.