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, the highlighter requires  . Note that the space in the tag is optional. I've explained this many, many times before, and it has nothing to do with the issue you brought up in May. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:34, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
 * By the way, if the highlighter did highlight  the way that you want, people would still complain about how it doesn't know where a   tag ends without an explicit  , or that it messes up on italics after an apostrophe like in French words (e.g. L'home ). The only way that the highlighter can perform reasonably quickly is if it only handles simple, consistent, straightforward syntax, and simple syntax is better for new users anyway because it doesn't require memorizing the HTML5 specification. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:53, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Conflict with RefToolbar
The syntax highlighter tool -- which I love and am so thankful for as it makes editing amazing and enjoyable -- appears to be creating a functional problem with the RefToolbar. Dropdown menus are not working if the tool is turned on. See ticket over at Phabricator and Loss of functionality thread. Just wanted to mention this if anyone else is using WikiMarkup and is having problems. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 10:44, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm having the same problem, and disabling the syntax highlighter solved it for me. But I really like using both... Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:21, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect display on Firefox and Chrome.
Recently (several weeks) I have been getting unpredictable displays from the syntax highlighter, which I find a very valuable tool when it works. Sometimes it works as expected and highlights the text in the edit window. more often, it highlights a chunk of white space about the same size as the edit window, directly below the preview, with what may well be the correct pattern of highkights, and the text in the edit window is not highlighted at all. This does not seem to be affected by the edit toolbar, which I usually use for creating citations, which is another story. as long as I dont save this seems to be stable, but after a save all bets are off. it may come back either way for the next edit, but probably 80% of the time defective. There is no obvious pattern and I usually have the latest versions of Chrome (on the laptop) and Firefox (on the desktop). This applies to English Wikipedia, where I am active at present I find the same pattern with screen magnification 100% or 120%. Some days seem to be worse than others. Is this a known problem? If so is there a fix? I have it selected as a gadget in preferences. Cheers, Pbsouthwood (talk) 19:53, 22 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry to hear that. Are you sure that you turned the syntax highlighter on in your preferences? On the English Wikipedia, you are importing it in your common.js. If you also have it turned on under Preferences (i.e. if you are importing it twice), I would have expected your browser to freeze entirely. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:57, 28 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Quite sure. I have now turned it off in my preferences, and it doesn't work at all. I would like it to work over as large a range of projects as is possible - Wikipedia, Wikivoyage and Wikiversity are top of the list. What is the best way to go about this? Do I need to select it in preferences for each project? Does the common.js work over all projects? I have no idea how this works... Cheers, Pbsouthwood (talk) 05:32, 29 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Oh I see, you were importing the highlighter from meta.wikimedia.org instead of www.mediawiki.org. This is probably why you were having problems. I've deleted the erroneous code from your common.js on the English Wikipedia. You will have to manually enable the syntax highlighter on each wiki site you use, either by enabling it in your preferences or by importing it in your common.js page. For starters, go to the English Wikipedia, enable the highlighter in your preferences there, and let me know whether or not that works now. —Remember the dot (talk) 06:16, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Eish! So many ways to get it wrong! Seems to be working now on Firefox, really good to have it back. Thanks. Will report back after testing on chrome on the laptop. Pbsouthwood (talk) 09:30, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks good on Chrome too. Cheers,Pbsouthwood (talk) 18:13, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Glad to help. I've blanked meta:User:Remember the dot/Syntax highlighter.js so that trying to import the highlighter from there now does nothing instead of causing an error. So, thanks for bringing this problem to my attention. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:01, 3 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Excellent, Cheers, Pbsouthwood (talk) 17:41, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Blackskin compatibility
There is a color issue with the Green on black skin on English Wikipedia. Could you add class to the container div and maybe a base foreground/background color? Dispenser (talk) 14:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Have you tried customizing the highlight colors? —Remember the dot (talk) 04:12, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Using JavaScript is the wrong way to change presentation. Additionally, the script is broken with the High Contrast theme (white text on black backgrounds) in Firefox/Windows 7.  Dispenser (talk) 14:47, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Rewriting the highlighter to allow CSS styling would result in both poor performance and ugly CSS. However, if you suggest highlight colors that work well against a dark background, I could make them the default for high-contrast users. —Remember the dot (talk) 07:37, 10 May 2017 (UTC)