GeSHi 1.1.0alpha3 Released

31/05/2005
The third alpha of GeSHi 1.1.0 is now available. The chief improvement in this build is greatly reduced RAM usage and time taken to highlight, at the expense of namespace support that nobody would use anyway ;).

The optimisations came about when I was running the parser on a test script that was "average sized", and I found that the 8 megabyte memory limit was not enough! The changes have both fixed this problem and made highlighting faster to boot - the parser is now at least as fast if not faster than the 1.0.6 build for comparable highlighting.

A link to the build is at geshi.org, where you can find out more.

Development Update

30/05/2005
I have finally finished my first trimester at university barring exams, so hopefully I will be able to put a lot more effort into GeSHi and related projects for the next few weeks.

I am planning on getting GeSHi 1.0.7 out this week some time, which will contain a significant number of bug fixes. Also, I hope to get out the third alpha of GeSHi 1.1.0, which should see more improvements and hopefully support for HTML and CSS languages.

Next week, I am planning to restart work on the GeSHi phpBB plugin, and I plan to get out version 0.4.0 of that, which will support bbcode buttons for the posting page and will be based on 1.0.7.

The downside is that after the three weeks I have off, I will be going to England for 5 weeks on holiday, then I will be straight back into university, so there may not be much activity around here for that time.

Take care, and look out for 1.0.7 this week!

GeSHi 1.1.0alpha2 Released

20/05/2005
The second alpha of 1.1.0 has been released. This build includes a "simplification" that takes away a feature that I had worked around a while ago in order to simplify and slightly speed up the parsing. The change led to greatly improved CSS support - CSS supports comments, more symbols, class and ID selectors are highlighted, values like "1em" and "#567" are highlighted, all attributes have been added and inline-media support has been added (fixes bug 2).

Get the build from sourceforge as usual. If you find any bugs, please submit them to the new bugtracker.

Finally, I have one week left at university until "study leave". I don't need study, so hopefully I will get GeSHi 1.0.7 out :)

GeSHi 1.1.0alpha1 Released

13/05/2005
Finally, the first alpha build of GeSHi 1.1.0 has been made available. The GeSHi 1.1.X series will be a series of alpha's, beta's, and finally release candidates before the final release of 1.2.0. GeSHi 1.2.0 will include a completely reworked implementation of highlighting with new features, while preserving the current API.

Be warned, however, that the alpha builds are not appropriate for end users. Hardly any of the current API is implemented! However, the syntax highlighting engine is in place, and developers or others may be interested in it.

And with the first 1.1 release I am now formally announcing: If you want to help out with the GeSHi project, I am "hiring". I am looking for people to assist in many areas, from testing to language maintainer, developers to release technicians. If you want to help out with an open source project in your spare time, or if you think you have detailed knowledge of a programming language and have the time to maintain the language files for it, then please contact me at nigel [at] geshi [dot] org.

Download the build from sourceforge.

Builds of GeSHi 1.1 Alpha to be Released Soon

07/05/2005
I'm preparing to start releasing builds of the source, as well as moving the CVS repository to sourceforge again. I've had some problems with CVS at sourceforge in the past but I'm confident that these will be fixed now. So hopefully soon builds of the source will be available at sourceforge. I will announce them here when they become available.

Also, if anyone is interested in helping out on the GeSHi project, check out http://geshi.org/ for more information (and to try out the latest build).

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.

GeSHi Project Update

15/03/2005
Just to keep you all informed, this is a quick update on the progress for GeSHi.

I have just started back at university for my second year of a BSc in computer science, and the pace has been quite torrid. I don't get too much chance to work on GeSHi, but I am trying to find time.

Work on 1.2.X still continues. I added functionality to support the start and end of a context being highlighted differently from the rest of the context, which makes more sense for things like <?php ... ?>. The delimiters should be highlighted, and not treated as keywords. Furthermore, because you can use a regular expression to match a starter, and capture blocks from that starter to match in the ender, heredoc syntax becomes easy and works perfectly now.

I think that the parser has got to a stage where it is pretty stable, so now I am refactoring and documenting the code. But since I don't have too much time, I'm looking at other people handling the language files. I will report more on this later.

Thanks to the people who sent in graphics for GeSHi - rest assured they will be used when I get around to the website redesign for the 1.2.X release.

And finally, I hope to get around to doing a 1.0.7 release soon (in my mid-trimester break). Some people have raised some issues with 1.0.6 that should be solved. So look out for that soon!

GeSHi Version 1.0.6 Released

14/02/2005
GeSHi version 1.0.6 has just been released. New to this version is improved tab support - I've ripped the experimental tab replacer out of the 1.1 engine and moved it into the 1.0.X series, firstly because there's no better testing ground than a live environment and secondly because I haven't had a single problem with it and believe it's ready for testing. Also included is a patch that may help users using the UTF-8 character set, although there are still some problems with using any other charset than ISO-8859-1.

The first alpha version of GeSHi 1.1 has been sent out to the testers now also, so hopefully some big improvements can be made quite quickly.

Alpha Testing for 1.1 to Start Shortly

09/02/2005
I've finally made a stand and decided that whatever happens, this week I'm getting the first alpha version of 1.1 out to the alpha testers. Hopefully this means that I will recieve lots of good feedback on how 1.1 shapes up and where it can be improved. By this time I believe I have the engine pretty stable - I added one small bug fix today, which was the first in about a week - and I'm hoping that the alpha testing stage makes the engine as solid possible before releasing a public beta version. No date for that I'm afraid, but I'll keep everyone posted.

GeSHi Version 1.0.5 Released

29/01/2005
GeSHi version 1.0.5 has been release. This is a maintenance/bug fix release, although containing a couple of minor feature enhancements, including auto-source/language selection based on a filename and a bug fix relating to encoding of entities.

Work still continues on 1.2.X. Although I don't know when it will be ready for testing, I haven't found any major holes in it for a while now, and even began adding some documentation to it the other day, which must be a good thing :). It is likely, however, that the first alpha versions will be released as a private alpha. Only some people who use GeSHi frequently or have access to configurations that I do not will get it to play with, as to not overload me with bug reports that aren't necessary. I feel this is necessary because there is still so much work to do, yet if I release something many people will treat it as release-grade when the API isn't even done. However, the betas, which will include the complete API and be tested by said alpha testers, will be public and available to all.

A release date? Sorry, this progresses as fast as I can make it go. I've got a bit more time to go at my full time job before a week off then back to university, so I'll keep everyone posted :).

Enjoy the new release!