syntax highlighting for rails

i’ve been rewriting the software backend for this site. it has been my intention, once that was partly done, to begin to discuss more technical stuff here, including code samples—most likely for rails stuff.

that’s all fine and well, but you can’t just post code snippets in black and white. no, this is a technicolor world now and that would never do. so i’ve been on a quest to figure how how to make my shiny, new rails backend parse the code blocks and introduce them to my box of 64 (!) crayolas. (as an aside, i’m pretty sure i wasn’t the only one at age 7 who thought his world would be complete if only i could get a 64-color crayola set — much better than my set of 16.)

anyway, i won’t get into lots of details at this point (although i can if somebody wants me to), but in case you need to do the same thing, here are a few jumping off points.

the most common solution seems to be to use the syntax gem. you’ll need to roll your own interface between it and rails, although rails weenie can offer some help.

syntax will recognize ruby, yaml, and xml by default. if you need something more robust, UltraViolet looks interesting although it would certainly have a heavier memory footprint. it leverages textmate bundles so it should be able to interpret/colorize nearly anything that is even semi-common, and then some.

i’m sure there are more options—add them to the comments if you know of something.