# Low level syntax highlighting tools? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [October 18, 2008, 5:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/low-level-syntax-highlighting-tools/151231 "2008-10-18T17:42:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 5:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/low-level-syntax-highlighting-tools/151231/1 "2008-10-18T17:42:53Z")
I’ll confess I didn’t research this deeply, in hopes that someone knows of a library and can point me right at it. Are there any syntax gems out there that’ll spit back simple strings and color values, something like: [[“def foo\n”, “ccffcc”], [" bar()\n", “ffffff”], [“end”, “ccffcc”]] If such a tool exists, I can rejoice, because it’d allow me to build an awsum Prawn based presentation builder. -greg ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 6:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/low-level-syntax-highlighting-tools/151231/2 "2008-10-18T18:13:21Z")
2008/10/18 Gregory B. : > I’ll confess I didn’t research this deeply, in hopes that someone > knows of a library and can point me right at it. > > Are there any syntax gems out there that’ll spit back simple strings > and color values, > something like: > > [[“def foo\n”, “ccffcc”], [" bar()\n", “ffffff”], [“end”, “ccffcc”]] I guess no, but if you’re using a syntax-colorizing, I think the thing to do is using the scanner/tokenizer part, that will yield you tokens for a specified language, and then you just have to create your own class of Encoder/Converter that will consume tokens and generate what you need, here an array like you want. It should be easy, for example, with CodeRay [1] : write your encoder, and don’t use the html encoder. > If such a tool exists, I can rejoice, because it’d allow me to build > an awsum Prawn based presentation builder. Very interesting. I was also thinking of using Prawn to generate slides. – Jean-François. [1] [http://coderay.rubychan.de](http://coderay.rubychan.de) ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 6:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/low-level-syntax-highlighting-tools/151231/3 "2008-10-18T18:30:59Z")
On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Jean-François Trân[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I guess no, but if you’re using a syntax-colorizing, I think the > thing to do is using the scanner/tokenizer part, that will yield you > tokens for a specified language, and then you just have to create > your own class of Encoder/Converter that will consume tokens > and generate what you need, here an array like you want. It should > be easy, for example, with CodeRay [1] : write your encoder, and > don’t use the html encoder. Cool, I’ll look into this, thanks. > > If such a tool exists, I can rejoice, because it’d allow me to build > > an awsum Prawn based presentation builder. > > Very interesting. I was also thinking of using Prawn to generate > slides. This code is very old, but will eventually be replaced with modernized Prawn code: > **[GitHub - practicingruby/brine: Simple presentation software based on Prawn](https://github.com/practicingruby/brine/tree/master)** > > master If you’re thinking of working on this, you’re welcome to fork this repos so that we don’t duplicate effort. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 6:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/low-level-syntax-highlighting-tools/151231/4 "2008-10-18T18:33:55Z")
On Oct 18, 2008, at 9:41 AM, Gregory B. wrote: > an awsum Prawn based presentation builder. > > -greg it seems like using Hpricot against one of the current highlighters would work - just skim out innerHTML/class pairs right? a @ [http://codeforpeople.com/](http://codeforpeople.com/) ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 6:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/low-level-syntax-highlighting-tools/151231/5 "2008-10-18T18:45:05Z")
On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 12:32 PM, ara.t.howard [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > [[“def foo\n”, “ccffcc”], [" bar()\n", “ffffff”], [“end”, “ccffcc”]] > > > > If such a tool exists, I can rejoice, because it’d allow me to build > > an awsum Prawn based presentation builder. > > > > -greg > > it seems like using Hpricot against one of the current highlighters would > work - just skim out innerHTML/class pairs right? Hmm… that’s an interesting idea too. I’ll take a quick look at how easy it is to get under the hood of Code Ray, and if it seems complicated, such a hack would probably do fine. -greg