I’m releasing a new version of the WordPress Textile 2 plugin, as well as my own plugin for doing syntax highlighting with GeSHi. But I feel like I need to explain what’s going on, rather than just posting the downloads.

There are two big changes to the Textile 2 plugin. I’ve changed the way I’m distributing the plugin: instead of a single file, there are two, which must go together into a folder in your WordPress plugins directory. To simplify that I’ve packaged them as a .7z .tgz .zip which you can just unpack in the plugins folder. The reason for this change is that this allows me to distribute the unmodified classTextile.php from Dean Allen’s last textpattern release, and allows you the option of just replacing that file with the latest from the svn repository in the future.

I’ve changed the name to “TextileWrapper” to be more in line with what’s really going on. I want to make perfectly clear that I am not editing Textile at all this time. Any bugs with the way Textile work are Textile’s bugs, and should be filed via the Textile Homepage. Any bugs with the way it integrates into WordPress should be filed here. As far as the version number … Dean Allen has left Textile as “2.0 Beta” for a very long time, despite the fact that he’s on version 4.3 of Textpattern (which has been using Textile since the beggining). The internal revision number for the file has been divorced from actual revisions to Textile, because Subversion revision’s the whole project, so there’s nothing to go on there, either. At any rate, based on all that, I’ve decided to just call this version 2.8 as it’s really the next version of my “Textile 2” plugin, even though I’ve renamed it … and it really should work with any version of Textile since the first 2.0 Beta.

I finally came to my senses with this release and realized that the problem with code blocks is really not a Textile problem, but rather, a problem of the various syntax highlighters I’ve been using.

After playing around with some regular expressions, I’m releasing my GeSHiWrapper plugin as well. It’s exactly the same concept as TextileWrapper: a simple wrapper around an untouched GeSHi – Generic Syntax Highlighter which should allow you to upgrade GeSHi without waiting for me to release new wrappers. As with Textile, I’ve packaged the whole thing with the current GeSHi: .7z .tgz .zip which you can just unpack in the plugins folder.

The GeSHi wrapper is a little more complicated than the TextileWrapper, because it’s intended purpose is to do code highlighting in a way that works with the various markup plugins (Textile, Markdown, etc) without any problems. To accomplish this, it runs two functions: one before, and one after the actual markup plugin runs (this assumes that you have the priority of the markup plugin set between 2 and 9 — it’s usually 6). The basic idea is that before the markup plugin runs it extracts the code blocks, and afterwards, it syntax-highlights them and puts them back. There are two catches.

The first problem is a GeSHi problem: it throws out the “code” blocks and replaces them with “div“s. This means you can’t use it to syntax highlight code in-line in a paragraph, because it will invalidate your markup … but it doesn’t track that. What it does do, is only replace code blocks with a “lang” or “language” attribute (which tells it which language the code is in — that is: php or csharp, not english). To get GeSHi wrapper to work, you should put your code tags in their own paragraph (GeSHiWrapper will rip off an extra set of p tags), and you must specify the *lang*uage for the source code. If you use Textile’s markup to add code tags that will not be highlighted, since GeSHi looks for code before Textile runs.

The second problem is a style problem: since GeSHi puts it’s code in a <div class="code lang"> block, you need to make sure you style that div appropriately (particularly note the problem of long source-code lines like regular expressions which may not have spaces, and thus, won’t wrap properly in Firefox). Personally, I style the .code class with overflow: auto; to get scrollbars.

The only GeSHi option that’s currently exposed in the wrapper (apart from the code language) is line numbering. If you want line numbering on, you should specify an attribute “line” with a numerical value for the number of the first line (note that the first line of code is on the same line as the code tag). This allows you to quote from the middle of a file and still use the line numbers logically like so: <code lang="csharp" line="104">

Eventuall I’ll release a new version of this wrapper with a config page for some of the options … particularly the choice of div or pre and of using stylesheets and class names instead of embedded styles, but I have a lot of other work to get done first, so if you’re interested in syntax highlighting that won’t break with your Markup plugin, don’t wait for that.

P.S.: To show that it’s all working, I messed around with my most recent test post and added a bunch of highlighted code and a few of the usual Textile torture tests.

Technorati Tags: WordPress, Plugins, Textile, GeSHi, SyntaxHighlight, Code, Web, Blogging, Markup

Here’s some HTML code:

And here’s a little PHP code:

And there is some non-highlighted code. In-line: print( "this is not highlighted" );, and the first part of the Hammurabbi Code in block form:

1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he can not prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death. 2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

That’s really a bit silly.

But hey, the whole point here is to just see what works and what doesn’t. Here’s more sample Textile:

This is a green title

This is a less important title

This is some red text. Yeah. Just because I can. Actually, you probably don’t care, but it’s cool that I can highlight text using colors or styles.

This is a block quote. It’s in english. It’s more boring than Dean’s.

We should really have a list or two:

1. This one is colored blue
2. Two

1. Three

We can have multi-level lists:

1. but unlike markdown
   1. we can’t
   2. have long paragraphs
1. in our lists
2. Or can we?

3. This might look like one. But it probably isn’t, really. What on earth do I mean by that? Well, basically, you can embed HTML code, so as long as you don’t mind doing that, you can put your own paragraph breaks in wherever you like.

   Of course, it looks a lot better if you put them in logical places, and it really screws things up if you forget to close them.

4. The problem is, you end up putting HTML in, which is ugly.

1. But have you ever really done that?

We can have mixed lists:

• Point one
• Point two
  1. Step 1
  2. Step 2
1. Step 3
2. Point three
   • Sub point 1

• Sub point 2

On the topic of inserting plain html, how about we insert an old-fashioned hypertext link? Thankfully, Textile’s clever enough not to muck about with the quote marks in the tags!

This is a link with a title!

A stolen image:

With a link back, so it’s ok (ooh, look, my smilies work) . That’s so fun ... someday I’m going to package all of those up into a plugin for distribution .

Some more text of dubious character. Here is a noisome string of CAPITAL letters. Here is something we want to emphasize.
That was a linebreak. And something to indicate strength. Of course I could still use my own HTML tags if I felt like it.

Coding

This is some code, "isn't it". Check out those quote marks! Now for some preformatted text:

	$text = str_replace("<p>%::%</p>","",$text);
	$text = str_replace("%::%</p>","",$text);
	$text = str_replace("%::%","",$text);

Well, that’s enough of that.

Another release of Textile by Dean Allen in his blogging tool TextPattern 4.0 has prompted me to make another release of my pluing based on his work. This release is so much better than the last couple, that I really want to just call it Textile 3. I won’t though, because that would confuse everyone, including me.

At any rate, this release improves block handling, and the ‘notextile’ tag (or double equals) actually works as advertised ( *check out* this "textile":1 code that was _not_ converted! ). Actually, that example brings us to another new feature: You can move the URLs out of your code, (even for images) and refer to them by number.

This release is also a lot better about not screwing up when you insert html into your posts, so this, for instance was done with a pair of <b> tags instead of textile markup. That means that comments don’t get messed up, and there should be any problem, for instance, with the adwords plugin.

There are two versions: Textile 2.6 and Textile 2.6 for beautifiers ... the “for beautifiers” version is what I’m using, it removes Textile’s clean-up of <code> sections, so that I can use GeshiSyntaxColorer …

Just for a cool example of the neat stuff:

The following textile code:

"Check out this page":1 for a nice place to test your Textile skills.

The image below shows a photo from "my flickr page":2

!4!:3

[1]http://textism.com/tools/textile/index.html
[2]http://flickr.com/photos/jaykul/l
[3]http://flickr.com/photos/jaykul/48483236/
[4]http://static.flickr.com/28/48483236_f9d5d11b99_m.jpg

Would reproduce like this:

Check out this page for a nice place to test your Textile skills.

The image below shows a photo from my flickr page

OK, so … I got my second actual comment spam today … and it was much more of a pain than I had anticipated (of course, that’s mostly because I put together this post complaining about it instead of simply deleting the posts).

The worst part is, the domains are all registered through domainsbyproxy dot com, which I think is just fitting, considering the anonymous coward didn’t even provide a legitimate email address.

Anyway , do not, under any circumstances, shop at any of these despicable dealers:

• Do NOT go to musical-instruments online dot com — if you’re looking for information on — tune a bass guitar or acoustic bass guitar or for a headset microphone
• Do NOT go to golf equip online dot com — if you’re looking for information on — golf ball monogrammer or left handed golf clubs or golf club exchange
• Do NOT go to background checks-online dot com — if you’re looking for information on — public criminal record check or criminal court records or hamilton county court record (why?)
• Do NOT go to loose weight effectively dot com — if you’re looking for information on — weight loss calculator or herb weight loss
• Do NOT go to flat screen tvs online dot net — if you’re looking for information on — lcd monitors or plasma tv buying guide or lcd flat screen
• Do NOT go to teleconference call services dot com — if you’re looking for information on — cheap conference calling
• Do NOT go to new-car priceguides dot com — if you’re looking for information on — 2004 lincoln navigators or audi a4’s
• Do NOT go to buy new cars-online dot com — if you’re looking for information on — corvette for sale or a car dealer
• Do NOT go to new car-quotes dot com — if you’re looking for information on — wrangler or a land rover
• Do NOT go to persian rugs online dot net — if you’re looking for information on — a hamadan
• Do NOT go to texas loan information dot com — if you’re looking for information on — texas home equity
• Do NOT go to wholesale-pricing dot com — if you’re looking for information on — all clad

• Do NOT go to area rugs online dot net — if you’re looking for information on — cheap area rugs

Oh, and in case you can’t figure it out, I ran myself a little search-and-replace and removed the links, and removed the original “advertisment” text before I posted it … I actually put the keywords and url text on this page in hopes of completely messing with their heads.

I’m going to have to change my settings … I actually had it set up before that you couldn’t use html at all in comments (although textile processing is always available[ ]), but when I upgraded to the latest WordPress over the weekend, it turned back on the ability for people to put html into the comments, and I figured I wouldn’t worry about it because nobody had ever tried anything. Boy was I wrong.

Well, it would serve them right if this warning page actually showed up when people went tooking for these things, but mostly I’m just venting. Phaugh!

The bad news is, I’m not sure I can keep track of the changes I made to b2functions.php so I can make them again after my next upgrade [ ]

So now the problems is, since I’ve got it working, I feel like I need to show it off by posting some code here, but the only code I can think of at the moment is the code for Textile … (I’m not allowed to post the code (yet?) to my solution for my school project).

So, here’s the mungy line I had to add to the bottom of Textile’s untextile($text) method:

It’s pretty horrid, but it should work on versions of PHP back to PHP3 with varying degrees of success. That is, it works fine, even on old PHP, but it works a lot better if you have 4.3 or newer, and even better if you have multi-byte strings enabled. [ ]

Edit Actually, the worst part of this whole thing has been figuring out when WordPress adds all those horrid <br> tags to my post! That’s just wrong! (especially inside my < code > blocks).

Edit Ok, well, the php version of textile that I have isn’t nearly as clever as the perl version Brad Choate whipped up … so I’m not sure what I should do. I mean, I liked some of the features from Brad’s, but I thought that he and Dean were working together on it, so I really thought more of the features would work across the board. At any rate, I got beautifier working, but I have to teach textile (and WordPress’s own formatting function) not to mess with stuff inside < pre > or < code > tags.

Edit Sorted! I figured it out. By upgrading to Textile 2 beta you can get rid of most of these problems [ ]. I should explain that there’s a trick to that: If you choose to upgrade to Textile 2 in WordPress, you’ll need to rename the single-letter global variables in Textile.php, because the WordPress guys have the same bad habit of using variables who’s names mean nothing. I recommend something more descriptive, but you can just copy mine As a side note, if we were using PHP5, this wouldn’t be a problem, we’d just throw that stuff in a namespace to keep it unique. [ ]

The last thing you have to do is dump all the WordPress formatting stuff by editing the bottom of your b2vars.php file to look like this:

Yeah, so there! Of course, you’re going to want my beautifier.php script which you can put in your wp-includes folder, and then dump all the files you get from beautifier.org into a directory called “beautifier” (or whatever you like, just make sure you edit beautifier.php to tell it where to go).