Introduction to Pygments

Pygments is a general purpose syntax highlighting library written in Python.

(From the documentation) There are four types of components that work together highlighting a piece of code:

• A lexer splits the source into tokens, fragments of the source that have a token type that determines what the text represents semantically (e.g., keyword, string, or comment). There is a lexer for every language or markup format that Pygments supports.
• The token stream can be piped through filters, which usually modify the token types or text fragments, e.g. uppercasing all keywords.
• A formatter then takes the token stream and writes it to an output file, in a format such as HTML, LaTeX or RTF.
• While writing the output, a style determines how to highlight all the different token types. It maps them to attributes like “red and bold”.

I used the command-line program pygmentize when setting up CSS for Python Markdown:

python3 /usr/bin/pygmentize -S default -f html -a .codehilite

Note the -S default parameter; that sets a style. Discovering the available styles is easy because they’re listed with the pygmentize -L command:

• algol: (no description)
• algol_nu: (no description)
• autumn: A colorful style, inspired by the terminal highlighting style.
• borland: Style similar to the style used in the borland IDEs.
• bw: (no description)
• colorful: A colorful style, inspired by CodeRay.
• default: The default style (inspired by Emacs 22).
• emacs: The default style (inspired by Emacs 22).
• friendly: A modern style based on the VIM pyte theme.
• fruity: Pygments version of the “native” vim theme.
• igor: Pygments version of the official colors for Igor Pro procedures.
• lovelace: The style used in Lovelace interactive learning environment. Tries to avoid the “angry fruit salad” effect with desaturated and dim colours.
• manni: A colorful style, inspired by the terminal highlighting style.
• monokai: This style mimics the Monokai color scheme.
• murphy: Murphy’s style from CodeRay.
• native: Pygments version of the “native” vim theme.
• paraiso-dark: (no description)
• paraiso-light: (no description)
• pastie: Style similar to the pastie default style.
• perldoc: Style similar to the style used in the perldoc code blocks.
• rrt: Minimalistic “rrt” theme, based on Zap and Emacs defaults.
• tango: The Crunchy default Style inspired from the color palette from the Tango Icon Theme Guidelines.
• trac: Port of the default trac highlighter design.
• vim: Styles somewhat like vim 7.0
• vs: (no description)
• xcode: Style similar to the Xcode default colouring theme.

I ran the following get an overview of the styles:

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#!/bin/bash
#LEXER="sql" FILE="/usr/share/doc/koji/docs/schema-upgrade-1.4-1.5.sql"
#LEXER="bash" FILE="/usr/local/bin/edit-pod-gz-base64"
#LEXER="sql" FILE="/usr/share/phpMyAdmin/sql/upgrade_column_info_4_3_0+.sql"
#LEXER="perl" FILE="/usr/local/bin/LinuxPartitionInfo_test.pl"
LEXER="python" FILE="/home/brian/projects/python-markdown-extensions/gentoc_remove.py"

for STYLE in default algol algol_nu autumn borland bw colorful emacs friendly \
  fruity igor lovelace manni monokai murphy native paraiso-dark paraiso-light \
  pastie perldoc rrt tango trac vim vs xcode
do
    echo -n " $STYLE" >&2
    echo "<hr><h2>$STYLE</h2>"
    expand -t4 $FILE |
        python3 /usr/bin/pygmentize -l $LEXER -f html -O style=$STYLE,noclasses=True,linenos=pre
    [ $? == 0 ] || break
done >pygmentize.html