In version 1.1 of WebIssues it will be possible to use the [code] tag in comments and descriptions. Text included in this tag will be displayd using monospace font, with all formatting disabled. This is useful for including fragments of output, log files, etc., but it can also be used for code snippets; after all it's an issue tracking software. Developers generally like their code colored, so all kinds of editors and other development tools support syntax highlighting for various languages.
Of course creating a syntax hightlighter is a very complex task, especially given the vast number of programming languages with very different syntax. No wonder than one of the popular tools, SyntaxHighlighter, contains about 100 kilobytes of (partially minified) JavaScript code, slightly more than jQuery. Another example is GeSHi, a 200 kilobyte PHP class with 3 megabytes (!) of language definitions. But syntax highlighting is just decoration, not a key future, so I want to avoid having to download tons of .js and .css files just to achieve this.
The problem is that these tools try to be much too thorough. I don't care if every single PHP function is highlighted, as long as the most important keywords are, along with comments, strings and fragments of HTML that are embedded into the PHP file (which in turn can contain embedded CSS and JavaScript). That's exactly what Google Code Prettify does. It is actively maintained by folks from Google, and it's used by Google Code itself and Stack Overflow, among others. I decided to use it as well.
The version which is included in the current development version of WebIssues is just 16 kilobytes of code. I removed a few unnecessary features and incorporated some of the additional languages into the main file. Currently supported languages include HTML and XML, C and C++, C#, Java, Bash, Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, CSS, SQL, Visual Basic and PHP. I also packed the final script using the Closure Compiler (also from Google) which decreased the file almost four times.
When I was looking for a syntax highlighter, initially I was thinking about doing it server side, using PHP code. It didn't occur to me that this can be done on the client using JavaScript. At first the idea seemed strange to me. However it's actually great and can significantly reduce the server load. From the user's perspective it doesn't really matter. After all, have you ever noticed that Stack Overflow highlights code snippets on the fly using JavaScript?
There is yet another benefit of using client script instead of PHP: it is possible to highlight code also in the Desktop Client. Otherwise the entire mechanism would have to be reimplemented in C++. Version 1.0 of the Desktop Client displays issue details using QTextBrowser, which doesn't support JavaScript and has very limited support for HTML and CSS. But version 1.1 will use QtWebKit, the Qt port of the same engine which powers Chrome and Safari. The advantage is that issue details will have the same look and feel in both the Web Client and the Desktop Client, and obviously it's possible to embed Prettify. I found some minor issues with QtWebKit, probably worth a separate post, but generally, everything works very well.
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