Textile Syntax Highlighting for gedit

In an effort to preserve my sanity while editing Textile under Linux, and since there seem to be no usable language definitions whatsoever for doing syntax highlighting of said while using gedit anywhere, I finally decided to roll my own basic (and hopelessly naïve) version of it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE language SYSTEM "language.dtd">
<language _name="Textile" version="1.0" _section="Markup" mimetypes="text/x-textile">
  <pattern-item _name="Bold" style="Data Type">
    <regex>(\*[\w \n]+\*)</regex>
  </pattern-item>
  
  <pattern-item _name="Heavy Emphasis" style="Data Type">
    <regex>(\*{2}[\w \n]+\*{2})</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Italics" style="Preprocessor">
    <regex>(\_[\w \n]+\_)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Emphasis" style="Preprocessor">
    <regex>(\_{2}[\w \n]+\_{2})</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Citation" style="Preprocessor">
    <regex>(\?{2}[\w \n]+\?{2})</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Superscript" style="Preprocessor">
    <regex>(\^[\w \n]+\^)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Subscript" style="Preprocessor">
    <regex>(~[\w \n]+~)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Removed Text" style="Preprocessor">
    <regex>(\-[\S]+\-)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Added Text" style="String">
    <regex>(\+[\w \n]+\+)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Code" style="String">
    <regex>(\@[^@]+\@)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Span" style="String">
    <regex>(\%[\w \n]+\%)</regex>
  </pattern-item>
  
  <pattern-item _name="List item" style="Keyword">
    <regex>(^ *\*[*#]*[ \t]+)|(^ *\#[*#]*[ \t]+)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Directive" style="Keyword">
    <regex>(^[\w{}()]+\.)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Footnote" style="Comment">
    <regex>(\[[0-9]+\])</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="URL" style="Comment">
    <regex>(\"[\w \n]+\"\:[\S]+)</regex>
  </pattern-item>

  <pattern-item _name="Image" style="Comment">
    <regex>(\![\S]+\!(\:[\S]+)*)</regex>
  </pattern-item>
</language>

Just save the above as ~/.gnome2/gtksourceview-1.0/language-specs/textile.lang, restart gedit and you’re set – you’ll then be able to pick Textile from the syntax highlighting menu.

If you really must delve into the intricacies of the above (please do, it certainly needs improvement), I should take the time to point out that the documentation (such as it is) is squirreled away here and here, but that it is not particularly useful.

Have the appropriate amount of fun.

Tao of Mac

Textile Syntax Highlighting for gedit