Updating syntax definitions

[stefanobaghino]

👋🏻 Hello, everyone!

A few weeks ago, I noticed that syntax highlighting didn't pick up Java text blocks (i.e., multiline strings). I started looking at the problem, which led me to learn that delta uses syntect for syntax highlighting, the same library bat uses.

Some more investigation made me realize that bat itself is lagging behind because ultimately syntect itself is. bat hasn't bumped its themes in a few years because of trishume/syntect#323 and trishume/syntect#271, which prevent the adoption of more modern themes.

I want to help, but first, I'd like to understand the maintainer's point of view on this matter so that my contribution can actually be helpful: is syntax highlighting compatibility with bat a core feature of delta (the README seem to point in that direction), or would you consider the idea of adopting a different syntax highlighting library? Or do you have a completely different approach in mind?

I am looking forward to your feedback; all the best!

[dandavison]

Hi @stefanobaghino! First I should be clear that my current job is providing an unlimited amount of interesting software challenges and I do not currently have time to take on a substantial delta project such as swapping out the syntax highlighter myself.

Beyond that, my initial thoughts are:

• In addition to the initial implementation, maintaining a high quality library of language syntax and theme definitions is non-trivial work. Is there a project you have in mind that would do that for delta? It has been extremely helpful to the delta project that bat has maintained these. (Thanks bat team!)
• What's good for delta would presumably be good for bat too: we have the same requirements here AFAIK. So if the bat team are not taking this step, we'd probably want to understand why.
• My impression is that two of the bat maintainers/contributors have taken over syntect maintenance (@Enselic and @keith-hall). They must have thought quite a lot about this issue.

[keith-hall]

We have had the idea of implementing support for other syntax highlighting engines like tree-sitter in bat, but nothing has been decided yet, and as some contributors have stepped forward to improve syntect (trishume/syntect#536), likely that gives us reason to keep using it.

[stefanobaghino]

@dandavison Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for involving @keith-hall!

@keith-hall I'll move to bat's discussion board to avoid spamming here. 🙇🏻