User talk:Remember the dot/Syntax highlighter

How to only highlight references
What exactly do I put where to end up only highlighting references? --Timeshifter (talk) 06:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Known issue about default page zoom
Is the "only works on default page zoom" issue something that's being worked on? — OwenBlacker | Discussion 15:36, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

What should i expect to fail with zoom?
So far, it seems it is working just fine with zoom, even if i change the zoom after loading the edit page. What is known to go wrong when the page is not at the default zoom? --TiagoTiago (talk) 16:20, 23 May 2013 (UTC)


 * When I change the page zoom on my computer (Firefox 21.0 on Lubuntu 13.04) while editing a page, the highlighting gets at least a little and sometimes a lot out of alignment with the text. If I zoom in before opening the edit page, it seems to work okay. Pretty much the same thing happens on Chrome. I think this is due to bugs in Firefox and Chrome, but I doubt they're going to get fixed anytime soon. If combining the syntax highlighter with page zoom works for you, more power to you, but I wanted to make clear that this combination is unsupported. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:29, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Text colour instead of background colour
Hi. I was wondering if it's possible to use your script to change the font colour rather then the background colour. The naive solution of changing  to   didn't work leading me to believe that this is due to how the textboxes are created. /Lokal Profil (talk) 14:23, 6 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I tried several methods to make the letters colorful and determined that there is no decent way to do it; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript were simply not intended to have every feature you would have when developing a desktop application. To make the letters colorful instead of their backgrounds you would have to make the letters transparent, which would also make the caret transparent, which I found unacceptable. WebKit has a proprietary CSS property,, that can change text color without changing the caret color, but I do not want to code to any particular browser. So, we're stuck with changing the background color instead. —Remember the dot (talk) 04:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah. No worries, at least this means I wasn't missing some obvious solution. Thanks for trying. /Lokal Profil (talk) 16:21, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

TemplateScript
I noticed this is not compatible with the regex tool from meta:User:Pathoschild/Scripts/TemplateScript. The highlighting is moved to a position below he wiki code (and the wiki code overlaps with the regex tool). Helder 12:45, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Improve speed?
I am using a slightly outdated desktop PC (Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3GHz, 1GB ram, on-board display card) to edit Wikipedia in Firefox. When the syntax highlighter is enabled, the scrolling of the article source window by mouse middle wheel is significantly slowed down. Is there anyway to further improve the speed of the gadget? Thx. -- Sameboat (talk) 03:30, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * If I could, I would... —Remember the dot (talk) 00:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

It's too slow on edit big page in Firefox (my PC is 7.8 performance index in Windows 7). Entered symbols appears after 0.5 seconds after buttons press.--JayDi (talk) 20:22, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Brilliant
This brilliant feature should be default on Wikipedia. I did already ask for it long ago.--Wickey-nl (talk) 14:35, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

wgPageContentModel is not defined
At some point it stopped working on my wiki (MW 1.21.2 with Vector). In Firefox console I get the message "Exception thrown by ext.gadget.DotsSyntaxHighlighter: wgPageContentModel is not defined". Is there a way to fix this please? Rob Kam (talk) 23:18, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Fixed as described at For webmaster if using MediaWiki 1.21 or earlier. Rob Kam (talk) 20:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Hotlinking to an always-up-to-date version
Is it possible to hotlink to the Syntax highlighter? In a similar way to how a hotlinked HotCat can be implemented. The advantage would be the other wiki would then always have the most recent version. Rob Kam (talk) 00:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I've added instructions on how to do this. I never intended for Wikimedia wikis to copy and paste the code, do you know of any which have done so? —Remember the dot (talk) 00:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I've been copy/pasting to my personal wiki. As per the instructions at User:Remember_the_dot/Syntax_highlighter. Rob Kam (talk) 14:27, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

HTML br-tag
in User:Remember_the_dot/Syntax_highlighter the text says: "... and use  instead of  ." According to http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_br.asp this seems not correct: . ''
 * The  tag inserts a single line break.
 * The  tag is an empty tag which means that it has no end tag.
 * In HTML, the  tag has no end tag.
 * ''In XHTML, the  tag must be properly closed, like this:

Shouldn't the doc reflect this by saying "... but, as an exception, do not use  instead of  ."? - DVdm (talk) 22:13, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


 * That section starts with "For performance reasons, the highlighter requires all tags to be valid XML."  is valid HTML but invalid XML and   is both valid HTML and valid XML. —Remember the dot (talk) 20:46, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, I know. My remark was about the missing space. Normally in XML (note that space between "whatever" and "/") should be used as a shorthand for an empty element . But meanwhile I found that the space is not needed, so (without a space between "whatever" and "/") is also accepted in XML, and thus in XHTML. - DVdm (talk) 14:47, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

installation problem
Hello, I got this script only to work as I changed the link  to   I got also an error message. I read also this and I don't understand it. :P -- Perhelion (talk) 16:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)


 * What browser, OS, and skin do you use? What was the error message? (When reporting bugs, follow the insructions at User:Remember the dot/Syntax highlighter.) —Remember the dot (talk) 20:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok yes, it seems may rarely the case, I using NOSCRIPT on Win 7 with Firefox (Chrome too) but the thing is I've mediawiki.org in the whitelist. Here is the msg:


 * And her is the msb from Chrome (35) without any addon/extension:


 * Hope that helps. :P I see in the En.WP. the Gadget is linked with . Best regards -- Perhelion (talk) 18:27, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Augh, MediaWiki should support, but it doesn't! Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I have updated the instructions to use   until that is fixed. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:12, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions
I've seen an fork of this, with extra options, like bracket highlight on the current corresponding marked bracket (like in most text editors), here. I also ask for an customizing option, the delay timer of 100ms seems IMO a bit low. Best regards -- Perhelion (talk) 16:48, 25 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Cool, I didn't know Schnark was still working on his fork. My version is designed to have less features but work much faster. As for the timeout, User:Remember the dot/Syntax highlighter already says:

Furthermore, you can specify a  that replaces the default 100ms timeout. For example:
 * —Remember the dot (talk) 20:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Omg I'm so blind! :P thank you! Yes but he is still "inactive" or very busy. -- Perhelion (talk) 18:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Compatibility scroll
Hello, I've another script which change the scrollTop value (of talk pages) to the bottom, but your script seems change (after a short timer, a jump is clearly visible) this back. I found no solution for this, can you help me? (I changed the  value, but it seems you script take the old value after a timer, maybe use wpScrolltop for this?) (PS. if you can need it, I've made a short German translation of the descripton ) PPS: This issue appears not with the Schnark fork. -- Perhelion (talk) 10:41, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It should be fixed now. As far as translations, I would be happy to accept a German translation of var errorMessage. After that, you could translate the user manual into German. —Remember the dot (talk) 17:13, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks too, it works now! Here is the error string:

Die Syntaxhervorhebung wurde auf dieser Seite deaktiviert, da diese zu lange gedauert hat. Die maximal erlaubte Zeit zur Hervorhebung beträgt $1ms und dein Computer benötigte $2ms. Versuche einige Tabs und Programme zu schließen und klicke \"Vorschau zeigen\" oder \"Änderungen zeigen\". Wenn das nicht funktioniert, probiere einen anderen Webbrowser und wenn immer noch nicht, probiere einen schnelleren Computer.
 * My pleasure. -- Perhelion (talk) 20:20, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Committed. —Remember the dot (talk) 06:13, 2 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Good! Unfortunately I've another small compatibility issue. I use now  because I set the caret to the end (with   standard modul). But the caret (focus) don't appear, but again with the Schnark fork. :-o Greetings -- Perhelion (talk) 13:33, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Wow* you got it, it works now! Seems it was very easy... ;-) Now I'll do the page translation. Thank you! :-) -- Perhelion (talk) 17:17, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Hej, I've fulfilled the de translation! *uuff* I come back because the caret jumps again on load to the top. (Maybe I can focus after onload-event from the Highlighter!?). Best regards → User: Perhelion 11:18, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
 * PS: I've tested an old version from you and the focus jumps not back (to the top). But I've made now my fokus to the document.ready and it works now too. Greetings  → User: Perhelion 17:05, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

tab-size
The  CSS property (and its prefixed variants) is not copied to the syntax-highlighting overlay. Can you fix this? — Keφr 10:57, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Not working
Hello, Since about 0700 UTC this morning, I've had no colors on my editing screen in English Wikipedia. I've become quite dependent on this script and miss it greatly. Syntax highlighter is still selected on my preferences panel. I am using a PC with a cable modem and FireFox 31.0. It seems to work with Chrome 36.0.1985.143 m, but that's not my preferred browser. It doesn't work on Internet Explorer 11.0.9600.17239 and that's no one's preferred browser. If this is helpful, it seems that the vertical spacing of the lines is greater than usual. Please let me know at w:en:User:SchreiberBike if there's any other information which would be helpful or if you have any pointers. SchreiberBike (talk) 19:05, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * When I go to preferences for MediaWiki and enable Syntax highlighter, it works in MediaWiki, but still not in English Wikipedia. SchreiberBike (talk) 19:09, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I've posted this to your Wikipedia page as I see that that is your preferred contact. SchreiberBike (talk) 19:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I'll just respond here. Have you tried clearing your browser cache (Ctrl+F5)? Do any suspicious messages appear on your browser console (Ctrl+Shift+J)? No one else (myself included) seems to be having problems. —Remember the dot (talk) 22:37, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I tried clearing the cache and there were no changes and I couldn't tell what was suspicious in the browser console, but I reopened FireFox in safe mode and found that the highlighter worked. Then I started disabling extensions and found that if Privacy Badger is disabled, it works again. I don't know why that would be, but it seems to be taken care of. Thanks for your help and thanks again for making this syntax highlighter available to us all. SchreiberBike (talk) 00:11, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, good to know. —Remember the dot (talk) 21:07, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I noticed the same problem with Privacy Badger. To get the highlighter to work, set www.mediawiki.org to allow or block cookies Mduvekot (talk) 04:34, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Greek translation
Please update this great gadget with this:

--Ioannis Protonotarios 20:24, 18 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Ευχαριστώ! —Remember the dot (talk) 07:02, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Syntax Highlighter in Wikia
Hi,

I'd like to let you know that we recently implemented your solution into Wikia stack. Link to code: https://github.com/Wikia/app/blob/dev/extensions/wikia/EditPageLayout/js/plugins/WikitextSyntaxHighlighter.js

You can see it in action on one of wikias: http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Naruto_Uzumaki http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Naruto_Uzumaki?action=edit

Thanks for great job of creating it. I hope it will serve well Wikia users. R-Frank (talk) 12:54, 23 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Cool! I'm glad you like it. You'll probably want to check back here periodically for bug fixes though. Just yesterday I committed this fix because a user pointed out a bug to me. —Remember the dot (talk) 19:51, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

HTML5
Hi there! I wanted to note that I have been using syntax highlighter, but it's got some errors. Wikipedia now (for a few years) uses HTML5, where both and  are valid (the space and slash are both optional). However,  still throws up error code (colors the text), making syntax highlighter much less useful. I am mostly active on the English wikipedia, so that is the best way to get a hold of me. en:User talk:Ogress (User talk:Ogress) 22:45, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The issue is still present. Please add support for normal &lt;br> tags, as is standard for HTML5. Asking everybody not to use it to make the wikitext compatible with syntax highlighter is just a lot of headache. Jack who built the house (talk) 14:43, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Shifted color positions
When I add the gadget, the edit box does something like this:
 * Shift the code some five lines down
 * Start coloring from the topleft corner

This in enwiki, current Firefox atop WinXP.

Is this the Known Issue: "The highlighter is not compatible with certain scripts that affect the edit box"? -DePiep (talk) 23:07, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Change image
File:Dot's Syntax Highlighter 2012-12-06.png doesn't show much of the syntax, just a bit of the inbox, notably references are not highlighted. I suggest using a different image to illustrate the usefulness and potential of this script. I don't see anything better in commons:Category:Dot's Syntax Highlighter, but I am sure we can upload a screenshot easily. --Piotrus (talk) 04:00, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

HTML5 and MediaWiki
We will have some problems with self-closed tags. Tech/News/2016/20 and T134423. I think 'XML compatibility' must be discarded. Iniquity (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2016 (UTC) Iniquity (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

isnt right. And because of that we have broken highlighting.:( Iniquity (talk) 21:08, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The syntax highlighter only tries to highlight absolutely correct syntax; the behavior of incorrect syntax is undefined. It is perfectly fine for the syntax highlighter to do whatever it wants with  and   because this syntax is considered incorrect. So, these non-void self-closed tags will continue to be highlighted, and it will be up to the users to fix the syntax. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:30, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * is right.
 * HTML5 considers both forms to be perfectly valid. To improve the highlighter's performance (the #1 complaint about it), and to encourage consistency with tags like to override it. Is that acceptable? —Remember the dot (talk) 03:32, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, but with a CSS class I can apply  that'll invert it without changing the color.  Also, force the text black.  If you want to go the extra mile and include an automatic high contrast;   returns   with the high contrast theme.  Dispenser (talk) 02:52, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The highlighter now uses black text on a white background unless overridden in a config variable. I also added  to the background div so that you can apply CSS filters if you want. —Remember the dot (talk) 01:51, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yay! I've had to add  because of the sRGB gamma curve killing the brightness.  Dispenser (talk) 23:48, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Linebreaks
It's been raised in this discussion on enwiki that the syntax highlighter may be breaking lines in two and starting the second line with a space. Of the possibilities raised I only have this highlighter enabled, so I'm bringing it to your attention. Thanks. Cabayi (talk) 07:13, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * My syntax highlighter is totally passive; it can't alter the text you input. There must be something else going on. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:51, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

New Wikitext Editor
Would it be possible to make this work with the new version of the wikitext editor? --TerraCodes (talk) 04:38, 21 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Theoretically yes, but it's not something that I'm going to worry about right now. It'd be better for the developers of the new editor to build syntax highlighting into the editor without relying on a gadget. —Remember the dot (talk) 06:55, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion
Hello, thank you very much for this great tool. It is pretty efficient and fast. In my own experience, timeout occurred only one (or maybe two) time in dozens of thousands pages' openings in edit mode with Firefox. My suggestion is to offer the possibility to highlight a text pattern (as a regepx or a simple string) which could be defined in the configuration. Something like:

All the best. --ContributorQ (talk) 17:17, 10 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi, I'm glad you like the syntax highlighter! There is not really an easy way to integrate arbitrary regular expressions into the syntax highlighter, I am concerned about how it would affect performance, and I don't see much usefulness in it. So, this is not a feature I plan to work on, but you are always welcome to copy the source code and modify it on your own. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:26, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your answer. I will try to customize your original version. --ContributorQ (talk) 23:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Highlighting above editor window - 1.31
Hello! Thanks for great gadget. I updated Mediawiki from 1.26 to version 1.31. Now the highlighting shows above the editing window. The source of problem is related to 'usebetatoolbar' option in WikiEditor. If I switch it off, everthing works ok, but users have only few buttons in menu. It seems that menu and highlighting work on the same layer or something like that. Behavior is the same on Vector and Timeless. What's interesting, enabling reCaptcha solves the problem. I have no other gadgets. Dolosw (talk) 19:21, 6 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The Wikimedia sites are at 1.32, and I don't see any problems here. Are you using the latest version of Syntax highlighter.js on your site? —Remember the dot (talk) 23:02, 5 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, I updated all the extensions and gadgets. I looked on Wikimedia and I can't find the difference. I switched to code mirror which works ok. But I will test gadged in following days. Dolosw (talk) 19:21, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

ES6 features are now used, no compatibility issues with old MW versions are mentioned in the installation guide
This revision introduces ES6 features like  and. As far as I know, these are not compatible with MediaWiki versions less than 1.33. I experienced this problem when copying the highlighter code as a gadget to a non-Wikimedia wiki running MW 1.31 (the section says MW 1.22 or greater is required). The version of the script previous to the one I linked worked. --AttemptToCallNil (report bug; view backtrace) 11:40, 6 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out. It turns out that the minifier still chokes on ES6 even in MediaWiki 1.33. Consequently I have reverted the syntax highlighter's code to the ES5 version. —Remember the dot (talk) 06:43, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Line breaks
The highlighter recognises, but not. AIUI, the latter is preferred. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:39, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

It does not work in Persian with the site
It does not work in Persian with the site and it looks bad --Sokote zaman (talk) 17:44, 21 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I looked at the Farsi Wikipedia today and it looked fine. Could you provide some more information? —Remember the dot (talk) 04:41, 22 May 2020 (UTC)