Markdown Color Syntax Highlighting in Kate

Most blog software allows the use of markdown syntax on posts. Markdown is a simple formatting language with an easy syntax which easily transforms into HTML and other formats (PDF,RTF,LaTeX). It’s designed to be a simple markup language (based on email formats) which is quite easily read in it’s native form. Here’s what the creator of Markdown says about the syntax:

Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions … the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.

To this end, Markdown’s syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually look like *emphasis*. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you’ve ever used email.

If you’re a blogger, you’ve likely already used Markdown. And if you’re using Linux with the Kate text editor, you’re aware Kate does color-coding formatting for most major languages/formats: C/C++, Java, Perl, Python, PHP and more. Unfortunately, Kate doesn’t have built-in syntax color-coding for Markdown; you need to create a custom XML file using Regular Expressions to determine what to color code and how.

Installation is simple — copy the markdown.xml file to your ~/.kde/share/apps/katepart/syntax/ directory. That’s it. Then, when you open a file with extensions of *.text, *.md, *.mmd, you’ll get Markdown-colored syntax editing!

UPDATE November 2012 A comment indicated this will be included in the KDE repository. Good news! I’d encourage anyone interested to work on the KDE version as that will provide the widest distribution.

Disclaimer: This works for us, but regular expressions can be very complex; if you use Markdown syntax differently you may find bugs. Regular Expression edge conditions can be challenging, so please leave a comment with a test case if the results aren’t quite what you expect.

Filed Under: Computers

Recommended Citation:
Yeager, Darrin "Markdown Color Syntax Highlighting in Kate" (2023-11-23 14:45),
https://www.dyeager.org/post/markdown-color-syntax-highlighting-in-kate.html
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