Automatically Syntax-Highlight received Code

[leolabs]

It would be great if we were able to send code snippets via Telegram in a way that is nicely readable by the receiver. I'm chatting a lot with other developers and often, I feel the need for such a feature.

Related issue on the Telegram bug tracker: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/824

[sigod]

Also, support for GitHub's Markdown would be a wise feature.

[animalillo]

Code highlighting, or at least tabulation, would be awesome

[leolabs]

The thing is, highlighted code doesn't have to be a new message format like images or videos as it's also just text. It could be marked like code in GitHub flavoured Markdown using three backticks or something like that.

[animalillo]

or just by using some library that detects most common programming structures, there is probably some library made to detect code inserted between text

[bararchy]

I'll also appreciate this !

code here

will be a nice addition

[meness]

I like the idea. I'm waiting for later versions of Telegram to see whether I need Kik Messenger installed on my phone or not. Please keep doing well developers.

[HallEffect]

I absolutely agree. Syntax highlighting is very useful thing

[ezdev128]

I disagree about automatic mode. Should be some markup language like [code]int main()...[/code] instead of automatic to avoid bugs and excessive CPU consumption on parsing messages.

[avestura]

Nice Feature, Like that ;)

[Ziul]

I would love that support! A markdown support as in GitHub or on HabitRPG's chat would solve well the problem about a non-dev sending a sample message and te app reading it as source code.

[andrecamposgm]

I know telegram is a mobile-first application, but we already have this kind of functionality in other chat tools like slack that use it in both mobile and desktop implementation.
This kind of markdown language would really help telegram to be adopted by technical teams on internal communication. I am trying to convince my team to replace slack and skype by telegram and this feature would help me a lot on this task!
Keep doing this great work!

[joeldrapper]

@GreatMedivack you just had to be different to everone else ⬆️

[brawaru]

+1 from me and +1 from my cat

[lawrencegs]

What would be the best way to handle this? Slack does code highlighting, but its not markdown style, rather code upload. UX matters too.

[pascalchevrel]

+1 for the same system as Github, backticks with the language code behind, would be super useful

[lopezjurip]

This was implemented, check this out:

Inline `code` has `back-ticks around` it.

```
var s = "Block highlighting";
alert(s);
```

[Ziul]

This is just the monospace, not Syntax-Highlight. And if a line have more than 51 characters, it breaks the line (if was even the 80 chars i would understand...but why 51?). And the mobile still not working well.
If the feature is already implemented, it need some improves.

[bskydive]

+1 highlight syntax like in gitter

[joeldrapper]

It's worth noting that it's now possible to format code blocks by using the @bold bot which accepts markdown.

[Niklan]

@joeldrapper @bold didn't support syntax highlighting and use word breaking to separate line. It's makes code more unreadable if you send some example to man for showing some example, it's hard to read and still better sending code with pastebin. It's needs horizontal scroll at minimum, but i don't know, support it's telegram or not.

[telegramdesktop]

@Niklan Currently TDesktop does not support horizontal scroll in messages layout :(

[theus]

Has no way to embed Pastebins links? However, a native option will be great.

[lawrencegs]

If inline-bot is the preferred ways for bold & italic... then we will probably have to resort to inline-bot for this "programmer only" case?

[theus]

@lawrencegs Could be inline-bots a way to do this, but the API don't have a implement
to modify colors in text. It has only a simple markdown.

[haimn]

I love the ``` block and I use it a lot, but syntax highlighting will be a new level.

[AndydeCleyre]

A related development: tok, an early telegram client from the kde group, recently added this feature, though I haven't tested it.

[amogorkon]

There's a vscode extension for telegram I'd love to use, but it's a fairly pointless if such basic features aren't supported.

[ilya-fedin]

There's a vscode extension for telegram I'd love to use

Am I missing something?

[amogorkon]

There's a vscode extension for telegram I'd love to use

Am I missing something?

[ilya-fedin]

for me it returns nothing :(

[amogorkon]

What version are you running? I've got 1.60.2

[ilya-fedin]

VSCodium 1.59.0

[amogorkon]

Could be related to VSCodium/vscodium#448

[Miuler]

Please, add Syntax-Highlight

[adriangalilea]

Just here to also bump the request of Syntax-highlight.

[vsolontsov-ll]

+1 for this feature!

[Andrew15-5]

+1 for manual code block:

```language
```

[Andrew15-5]

As was pointed out here, web version does support manual code block (as I showed in my previous comment), but not for all languages. I tried python and latex and only the first one works (GitHub supports both).

[kirsan31]

It's coming? 🤔🙏
2414e92

[john-preston]

It's done in some way. In the upcoming version you'll be able to specify language after triple-tick:

```cpp
code here
```

Then it'll be a usual monospace block but with some syntax highlighting on top. It won't be supported in the message input field (at least for now, maybe ever), but some improvements may come when there is more time for that.

[john-preston]

Lines will break as before, implementing a horizontal scroll for a part of a message in the middle of the message bubble is something really complex and not planned right now.

[kirsan31]

@john-preston
First of all - thank you 🙏

I've tried current build. Bugs:

1. ```cs (default for c#) doesn't work, ```dotnet doesn't work too, only ```csharp is working.
2. For cpp and c# and I think for all same synaxis - wrong color for last closing bracer:
   

[john-preston]

@kirsan31 I see, prism.js has aliases for languages, that aren't handled in the libprisma fork. Thanks for pointing that out.

Last bracer is a bug, thanks, fixed in code.

[Aokromes]

b209683

[Piterden]

@john-preston , first of all thank you so much for this feature! Looks really good, but there are a few remarks:

• Unnecessary line wrap. And here is what it looks like:
  
• It is impossible to change the highlighting language, moreover, when editing, the text indicating the language disappears completely. I would make a drop-down menu with a list of languages.
• Lack of reaction to the change of app theme. It seems to me that it would be logical if the syntax highlighting colors were set by the theme editor, because there are not so many different highlighting areas to put them there.
• Many people are using monospace font not for code, so the word code when no language is specified seems a bit superfluous to me. Monospaced code-blocks have the ability to be copied by a click on them and I had seen many times people are using this feature. But if be honest, it bothers me personally.
• It would be ideal to have internal a code recognizer.

PS About prismjs: it hasn't code recognizer and this was the main reason I refused it, as I remember. I used highlight.js instead.

[john-preston]

1. Providing horizontal scrolling inside the message bubble is a very complex task on its own and not planned in this release definitely. Maybe later if there'll be time. Might be in another nine years though 🫣
2. Editing is bad indeed, should be improved somehow.
3. The colors are taken from theme, but from statistics color keys 😂
4. For quotes there will be a dedicated feature starting with this release. So monospace code blocks are left for code. They can be copied by a click on the block title.
5. It would be.

[rtfmoz2]

@Piterden So what languages are supported. There is no doco anywhere and once I find out I can update. Since you mentioned highlight.js I take it these then? https://highlightjs.org/

[kirsan31]

So what languages are supported.

https://prismjs.com/index.html#supported-languages

[AndydeCleyre]

So what languages are supported.

https://prismjs.com/index.html#supported-languages

This list includes Factor, but I don't get any highlighting for that in the latest Android app.

---

EDIT: I just tested on the desktop app, where it does color strings and numbers (only?) for Factor.

[Andrew15-5]

Speaking of Android app, I immediately noticed that syntax colors differ between desktop and mobile app. I even applied my custom "desktop" theme on the smartphone, and it still shows different colors on the same message with a code. I checked and didn't see any color values that are applied to the code. So these code color schemes are platform dependent. This is not what I expected. And I want to say that Android colors are better (at least green color for "strings" is more natural IMO than orange).

So, adding a list of color schemes would be a huge feature. Imagine, every dev will see the same code message (in a group chat) in the color scheme that they want. This would be amazing. But it would require a separate menu (section) with a variety of color schemes, including custom ones. But if this is too ambitious, then a set of values in theme's color palette, which are specific for each code token type (string, number, keyword etc.), would do the trick.