GNU Source-highlight - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Author: Lorenzo Bettini

# GNU Source-highlight 1.9

by Lorenzo Bettini

This program, given a source file, produces a document with syntax highlighting.

At the moment this package can handle

- Java
- Javascript
- C/C++
- Prolog
- Perl
- Php3
- Python
- Flex
- ChangeLog
- Ruby
- Lua new
- Caml new
- Sml new

as source languages, and

- HTML
- XHTML
- ANSI color escape sequences (you can use this feature with less)

as output formats.

NOTICE: now the name of the program is source-highlight: there are no two separate programs, namely java2html and cpp2html, anymore. However there are two shell scripts with the same name in order to facilitate the migration (however their use is not advised).

GNU Source-highlight is free software. Please see the file COPYING for details. For documentation, please read this file.

GNU Source-highlight is a GNU program and its main home page is at GNU site:
http://www.gnu.org/software/src-highlite/source-highlight.html

## Download

You can download it from GNU's ftp site:
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/src-highlite/ or from one of its mirrors (see http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html).

I do not distribute Windows binaries anymore; since, they can be easily built by using Cygnus C/C++ compiler, available at http://www.cygwin.com/. However, if you don't feel like downloading such compiler, you can request such binaries directly to me, by e-mail (find my e-mail at my home page) and I can send them to you.
An MS-Windows port of Source-highlight is available from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/.

You may also want to check the md5sum of the archives, which are also digitally signed by me (Lorenzo Bettini) with GNU gpg (http://www.gnupg.org). My GPG public key can be found at my home page (see at the end of this doc).

You can also get the patches, if they are available for a particular release (see below for patching from a previous version).

### Anonymous CVS Access

This project's CVS repository can be checked out through anonymous (pserver) CVS with the following instruction set. When prompted for a password for anoncvs, simply press the Enter key.

    cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/src-highlite login

    cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/src-highlite co src-highlite

Further instructions can be found at the address: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/src-highlite.

## Changes in this release

- see NEWS file for a summary of new features in this release and
- see ChangeLog for the complete list of changes sources

## Related Software and Links

Martin Gebert is also implementing a KDE interface to source-highlight programs, at the moment it is still in beta (but he did a wonderful job!), and it is called ksrc2html; if you want to test it: http://murphy.netsolution-net.de/Ksrc2.html.

CGI support was enabled thanks to Robert Wetzel; I haven't tested it personally yet, so you may ask him directly. Moreover he set up some examples at the page http://www.inf.tu-dresden.de/~rw8/java2.html. If you want to use source-highlight as a CGI program, you have to use the executable source-highlight-cgi.

Moreover there's also a Java version of java2html, you can find it at http://www.generationjava.com/projects/Java2Html.shtml.

## Installation

See the file INSTALL for detailed building and installation instructions; anyway if you're used to compiling Linux software that comes with sources you may simply follow the usual procedure:

    cd <source code main directory>
    ./configure
    make
    make install

Note: unless you specify a different install directory by --prefix option of configure (e.g. `./configure --prefix=<your home>`), you must be root to '`make install`'.

It is also possible to specify as following option for configure:--enable-input-chroot to hardcode in the program the path to prefix for input files.

Before you run '`make install`' you may want to check that the programs have compiled fine, so you can run '`make check`'.

Files will be installed in the following directories:

- `Executables -> /prefix/bin`
- `docs and samples -> /prefix/share/doc/source-highlight`
- `conf files -> /prefix/share/source-highlight`

Default value for prefix is `/usr/local` but you may change it with --prefix option to configure (see above).

### Building .rpm

Christian W. Zuckschwerdt added support for building an .rpm and an .rpm.src. You can issue the following command

    rpm -tb source-highlight-1.9.tar.gz

for building an .rpm with binaries and

    rpm -ts source-highlight-1.9.tar.gz

for building an .rpm.src with sources.

### What you need to build source-highlight

Actually you need nothing more than a Unix C/C++ compiler

source-highlight has been developed under Linux, using gcc (C++), and bison (yacc) and flex (lex), and ported under Win32 with Cygnus C/C++compiler, available at http://www.cygwin.com/ (a .DLL is also distributed together with the .exe: you may simply copy it in the same place of the .exe). I used the excellent GNU AutoconfandAutomake. I also used Autotools (ftp://ftp.ugcs.caltech.edu/pub/elef/autotools) which creates a starting source tree (according to GNU standards) with autoconf, automake starting files. Finally I used GNU gengetopt (http://www.gnu.org/software/gengetopt), for command line parsing.

Actually, unless you want to develop source-highlight, you don't need all these tools to build source-highlight because I provide generated sources; you don't need neither bison (yacc) nor flex (lex), for the same reason. Actually programs that use lex generated files need to link with librarylibfl (or libl for lex); anyway configuration phase can discover if this library is missing and in that case it sets the program to link with a source file I provide. This hack works for flex: I don't know about lex generated scanners. But, again, this is a problem only if you develop source-highlight and you use lex.

### Patching from a previous version

If you downloaded a patch, say `source-highlight-1.3-1.3.1-patch.gz`(i.e. the patch to go from version 1.3 to version 1.3.1), cd to the directory with sources from the previous version (`source-highlight-1.3`) and type:

    gunzip -cd ../source-highlight-1.3-1.3.1.patch.gz | patch -p1

and restart the compilation process (if you had already run configure a simple `make` will do).

## Usage and examples

source-highlight only does a lexical analysis of the source code, so the program source is assumed to be correct !

here's how to run source-highlight (for this example we will use C/C++input files, but this is valid also for other source-highlight input languages):

    source-highlight --src-lang cpp --out-format html --input <file (a C++ prog)> --output <file (an html)> [options]

For input files, apart from the -i (--input) option and the standard input redirection, you can simply specify some files at the command line and also use regular expressions (for instance *.java). In this case the name for the output files will be formed using the name of the source file with a .<ext> appended, where <ext> is the extension chosen according to the output format specified (in this example it would be .html).

If `STDOUT` string is passed as -o (--output) option, then the output is forced to the standard output anyway.

Required command line option is:

1. --out-format (or -f) <format>: where <format> can only be:

- html
- xhtml
- esc

This specifies the format for the output of the highlighter (for the moment only html output can be produced).

Other command line options:
--src-lang (or -s) <lang>: where <lang> can be:

- java (for Java)
- javascript (for Javascript)
- cpp (for C/C++)
- prolog (for Prolog)
- perl (for Perl)
- php3 (for Php3)
- python (for Python)
- flex (for flex)
- changelog (for ChangeLog)
- ruby (for Ruby)
- lua (for Lua)
- caml (for Caml)
- sml (for Sml)

This specifies the language used to write the sources that have to be processed. If you do not specify this option, source-highlight will guess the source language from the file extension.
If you want a real html document, specify --doc option at the end. Otherwise you just get some text to copy and paste in you own html pages. If you choose -doc option the page will have a white background and your source file name as title. --tab n option apply a substitution of tab characters with n spaces. You also may want to specify the title of the page with --title "my title" option (this implies -doc). You can also generate an html with CSS format, by using --css "url of .css" (try some .css files included in the package). If you want to cancel the --doc option when it is implied (e.g. with --title and --css) you can do that with --no-doc. The order of the options is not relevant. You may also want to customize the produced document: you can use--header and --footer options that allow you to specify files to be included, respectively, at the beginning and at the end of the document.--tags-file allows to specify the location of the file for format options (see below). --output-dir specifies the output directory (if the output option is not specified the same directory of the source file is used). --line-number option enables generation of line numbers. --line-number-ref also add an anchor that can be referred to from another document.

Here are some links to some of the C and C++ sources of source-highlight colored with source-highlight itself:

> startapp.cc.html

generated with the following command

>     source-highlight -s cpp -f html --doc startapp.cc

Obviously it works with C files as well:

> cmdline.c.html

Created with the command (notice that this one uses both CSS file and headers and footers):

>     source-highlight -s cpp -f html -i cmdline.c -o cmdline.c.html
>                 --css="cpp2html.css"
>                 --header="./header.html" --footer="./footer.html"

And obviously it works with header file as well:

> cmdline.h.html

created with the command:

>     source-highlight -s cpp -f html *.h --css="mono.css"

Here are some examples of Java files processed with source-highlight: Use Hello.java to make some test, if you want. Here's how Hello1.html, Hello2.html, Hello3.html, Hello4.html, Hello5.html, Hello_h_f.html, Hello_lines.html, Hello_xhtml.html, Hello_xhtml2.html were created:

    source-highlight -s java -f html -i Hello.java -o Hello1.html
    source-highlight -s java -f html --input Hello.java --output Hello2.html --doc
    source-highlight -s java -f html -i Hello.java -o Hello3.html --title "Happy Java with java2html :-)" --tab 3
    source-highlight -s java -f html < Hello.java > Hello4.html --title "and what about CSS :-)" --css "Hello.css"
    source-highlight -s java -f html < Hello.java > Hello5.html --title "Wooo... this is quite dark ;-D" --css "mono-alt.css"
    source-highlight -s java -f html --doc *.java
    Processed Hello.java   (creates Hello.java.html)
    source-highlight -s java -f html --doc -i Hello.java -o Hello_h_f.html --tags-file="tags2.j2h" --header="header.html" --footer="footer.html"
    source-highlight -s java -f html --line-number --doc -i Hello.java -o Hello_lines.html
    source-highlight -s java -f xhtml --doc -i Hello.java -o Hello_xhtml.html --css xhtml.css
    ../src/source-highlight -s java -f xhtml --doc -i Hello.java -o Hello_xhtml2.html --tags-file tags.j2h

Here's the output of source-highlight applied to a Prolog program (through the option ``source-highlight -s prolog``: test.pl.html. This one is an highlighted Perl program (through the option ``source-highlight -s prolog``):test.pm.html. Here's an highlighted PHP3 program: test.php3.html. And here's a Python program: test.py.html. This the the flex scanner for flex files flex_scanner.ll.html. This is a Ruby program: test.rb.html. This is a Javascript program test.js.html. This is a Lua test program test.lua.html. This is a Caml test program test.ml.html and this is an Sml test program test.sml.html.

You can pass the output of source-highlight, when using esc as output format (that generates ANSI color escape sequences), directly to less, this way:

    source-highlight -f esc -i Hello.java -s java | less -R

And here's the output of ``source-highlight --help``

    GNU source-highlight 1.9

    Purpose:
      Highlight the syntax of a source file (e.g. Java)
      into a specific format (e.g. HTML)

    Usage: source-highlight [OPTIONS]... [FILES]...

      -h, --help               Print help and exit
      -V, --version            Print version and exit
      -i, --input=STRING       input file. default std input
      -o, --output=STRING      output file. default std output
      -s, --src-lang=STRING    source language (e.g. java, javascript, cpp,
                                 prolog, perl, php3, python, ruby, flex,
                                 changelog,lua,caml,sml).   If not specified, the source
                                 language will be guessed from the file extension.
      -f, --out-format=STRING  output format (e.g. html, xhtml, esc)
      -v, --verbose            verbose mode on
      -d, --doc                create html with title and header
          --no-doc             cancel the --doc option even if it is implied
                                 (e.g., when css is given)
      -c, --css=STRING         use a css for formatting. Implies --doc
      -T, --title=STRING       give a title to the html. Implies --doc
      -t, --tab=INT            specify tab length. default 8
      -H, --header=STRING      file to insert as header
      -F, --footer=STRING      file to insert as footer
          --tags-file=STRING   specify format options (def. tags.j2h)
      -n, --line-number        number all output lines
          --line-number-ref    number all output lines and generate an anchor that
                                 can be referred to from another document
          --output-dir=STRING  output directory
          --gen-version        put gengetopt version in the generated file
                                 (default=on)

As it handles standard output and input you may also run it like

    cat MyFile.cpp | source-highlight -s cpp -f html | lpr

You may want to specify your options for syntax highlighting in the file tags.j2h. If this file is not present in the current directory, some default colors will be used. Here's the `tags.j2h` file that comes with this distribution:

    keyword blue b ;      for language keywords
    type darkgreen ;      for basic types
    string red ;          for strings and chars
    comment brown i ;     for comments
    number purple ;       for literal numbers
    preproc darkblue b ;  for preproc directives (e.g. #include, import)
    symbol darkred ;      for simbols (e.g. <, >, +)
    function black b;     for function calls and declarations
    cbracket red;         for block brackets (e.g. {, })

tags2.j2h also specify the color of normal text, indeed it adds this line

    normal darkblue ;

as you might see the syntax of this file is quite straightforward:

- b = bold
- i = italics
- u = underline

You may also specify more than on of these options separated by commas
e.g.

    keyword blue u, b ;

you may see all possible colors in the file colors.html but you can also use the standard #<number> html syntax for specifying a color.

if something goes wrong with your options try to run source-highlight with `--verbose` option enabled.

## Use source-highlight with less

This was suggested by Konstantine Serebriany.
The script src-hilite-lesspipe.sh will be installed together with source-highlight.
You can use the following environment variables:

    export LESSOPEN="| /path/to/src-hilite-lesspipe.sh %s"
    export LESS=' -R '

This way, when you use less to browse a file, if it is a source file handled by source-highlight, it will be automatically highlighted.

## Credits

See CREDITS for detailed contributions and THANKS for a complete list of people that helped me with Source-highlight :-)

## Feedback

Please tell me if you like this software :-)

Actually I want to extend it, so if you have some ideas...
The most import one will be to make source-highlight more customizable :-)

Please send all bug reports by electronic mail to:
bug-source-highlight at gnu dot org

# TODO

Here's the list of TODO stuff, if you'd like to contribute :-)

# Mailing Lists

The following mailing lists are available:

- help-source-highlight at gnu dot org, for generic discussions about the program and for asking for help about it (open mailing list), http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-source-highlight
- info-source-highlight at gnu dot org, for receiving information about new releases and features (read-only mailing list), http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-source-highlight

if you want to subscribe to a mailing list just go to the URL and follow the instructions, or send me an e-mail and I'll subscribe you.

My home page is http://www.lorenzobettini.it

source-highlight is free software. See the file COPYING for copying conditions. Anyway I won't get offended if you send me a postcard :-)

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Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated:9 Jan 2001 mhw