GeSHi Reaches One Year Old

25/04/2005
Today GeSHi officially reaches one year old!

One year ago, GeSHi was little more than a dream, a function inside some phpBB code. Now, it is without doubt the best solution as a syntax highlighting plugin on the 'net available. It has won me an award and taught me much about programming. And it's never stopped being fun to make.

Unfortunately, recently my time has been overwhelmed by university, soccer and other things that happen in the Real World. But whenever I get the chance, I do some work on GeSHi. And some time within the next year I know it will pay off when GeSHi 1.2 is released. GeSHi 1.2 will be an important step along the way of fufulling the original goals I had for GeSHi - multiple output formats (like PDF), speedy highlighting and easy incorporation into other software. Multiple output formats won't make it into 1.2, but the framework will be in place for them.

Along the way of developing 1.2, some other possibilities have arisen. For example, because the 1.2 strand actually tokenises the source (the version the testers have does not do this, but CVS Head does), there arises the possibility of pulling out information about the code - what functions/classes are in it, what variables are in it, and it could even point out possible errors in the code (unused/redeclared variables, bracket matching and the like).

I want GeSHi to get to that stage - the stage where it is comparable to Smarty in its own field. Many clones, but only *one* true answer to the need for syntax highlighting. Recently, I saw an article at sitepoint outlining how to do syntax highlighting. GeSHi was mentioned -- as a footnote. Furthermore, it sounded like what counted against it was the fact that it wasn't in PEAR! I was disappointed. GeSHi 1.2 will be PEAR-compliant, and furthermore a far better solution for syntax highlighting than any other available in the article.

However, I don't expect anyone reading this to take me at face-value -- after all, I may just be advertising vapourware. So, I've set up a demo of 1.2 at the future GeSHi home - geshi.org. At the new site you will find information about the progress of GeSHi, features that will be included in 1.2, and demo form you can use to try it out for yourself! At the moment only PHP is supported - but it is PHP with HTML, CSS and Javascript highlighting embedded so you can see the power of 1.2. Feel free to give it a go!

In short, I know that not much has gone on around here recently, but have faith! GeSHi 1.0.7 is planned, and 1.2 will come some time in the next year. I'll keep you informed.