The syntax highlighting definitions that come bundled with nano are of pretty poor quality. This is an attempt at providing a good set of accurate syntax definitions to replace and expand the defaults.
Note : This is continuation of an unmaintained repo. I have not created all the stuffs. Nano is practical for me on SSH.
Apple forgot to update Nano. This way the best way to update OS X Nano - OS X Nano Syntax highlighting
Applicable to GNU Linux, OS X (After Updating Nano from Vintage 2.0 version).
cd ~ && git clone https://github.com/AbhishekGhosh/nano-syntax-highlighting-iNano-.git
cd nano-syntax* && sudo make install-global TEXT=white
nano ~/.nanorc
Add these lines and save it
# include "/usr/local/share/nano/nanorc.nanorc"
# concatenated by my script #
include "/usr/local/share/nano/ALL.nanorc"
Done. Do the same on your Linux Server. cd ~ always will point towards $HOME.
Using make install will install the syntax definitions to the
~/.nano/syntax/ directory.
To enable highlighting for all languages after installation, add the
following command to your ~/.nanorc file:
include ~/.nano/syntax/ALL.nanorc
To enable only a subset of languages, include them individually:
include ~/.nano/syntax/c.nanorc
include ~/.nano/syntax/python.nanorc
include ~/.nano/syntax/sh.nanorc
# ...
If you prefer to install to a location that all users can access, using
sudo make install-global will install to /usr/local/share/nano/.
Syntax files installed under this directory can then be included in
either /etc/nanorc or any user's personal ~/.nanorc.
Note: If your terminal text color isn't black, you'll need to
specify it when installing, using make install TEXT=color, where
color must be one of: red, green, yellow, blue, magenta,
cyan or white.
After installation, the various source code samples in the examples
directory can be used to check that highlighting is working correctly.
If it doesn't work as expected, see the FAQ below.
All *.nanorc files are passed through [mixins.sed] and [theme.sed] before
installation. These scripts allow rules to be specified in terms of token
names or [mixins], instead of hard-coded colors.
For example, the following named rule:
TYPE: "int|bool|string"
becomes:
color green "int|bool|string"
and the following "mixin":
+BOOLEAN
becomes:
color brightcyan "\<(true|false)\>"
This system helps to keep colors uniform across different languages and also to keep the definitions clear and maintainable, which is something that becomes quite awkward using only plain [nanorc] files.
Note: if ~/.nanotheme exists it will be used as a custom theme, in
place of [theme.sed]. A custom theme may also be specified by installing
with make THEME=your-custom-theme.sed. Themes must be valid sed scripts,
defining all color codes found in [theme.sed] in order to work correctly.
There appears to be a bug in older versions of nano that causes
highlighting to fail when /etc/nanorc and ~/.nanorc both contain
syntax rules. The usual workaround is to remove all syntax and include
commands from one file or the other, or to use a newer version of nano.
In order to reliably highlight keywords, this projects makes heavy use of
the GNU regex word boundary extensions (\< and \>). BSD implementations
also have these extensions but use a different, incompatible syntax
([[:<:]] and [[:>:]]). Since version 2.1.5, nano can automatically
translate the GNU syntax to BSD syntax at run-time, but for the benefit of
people running a pre-2.1.5 version of nano on OS X or *BSD, the .nanorc
file itself can be translated by installing with make BSDREGEX=1.
Because nano compiles against the platform's native regex library and some
platforms don't support \s (as it's not required by POSIX [ERE]).
GNU GPL 3.0