Highlighting special character codes in HTML

[mary.vivit]

Again, I apologize for a newbie question. I'd like to highlight special character codes (e.g., >) when viewing HTML. I've tried adding a /C section to the /L HTML block of my wordfile.txt file. I've tried listing the character codes I use all the time, but they aren't highlighted in the HTML code. However, if I simply list the ampersand, it's highlighted.

Is there a way to do this? Thanks again for the handholding.

Mary

[Mofi]

Yes, it is possible. But the solution has one big disadvantage - correct html entities then act as word delimiters, so for example the german word Hölle (engl. hell) are 5 words ("H", "&", "ouml", ";" and "lle"). So selecting words with entities cannot be done anymore with a single double click.

Okay, first you have to add '&' and ';' to the /Delimiters = list.

Second, you have to add one of the two color sections below. The first one (green) is for case-insensitive html syntax highlighting (normal for html), the second is for case-sensitive highlighting. Html is not case-sensitive, but the entities are. So turn off auto-correcting when you use case-insensitive highlighting. And don't forget to set the correct color number /Cx.

/Cx"Entities (no case)"
aacute acirc acute aelig agrave alefsym alpha amp and ang aring asymp atilde auml
bdquo beta brvbar bull
cap ccedil cedil cent chi clubs cong copy crarr cup curren
dagger darr deg delta diams divide
eacute ecirc egrave empty emsp ensp epsilon equiv eta eth euml euro exist
forall frac12 frac14 frac34 frasl
gamma ge gt
harr hearts hellip
iacute icirc iexcl igrave image infin int iota iquest isin iuml
kappa
lambda lang laquo larr lceil ldquo le lfloor lowast loz lrm lsaquo lsquo lt
macr mdash micro middot minus mu
nabla nbsp ndash ne ni not notin nsub ntilde nu
oacute ocirc ograve oline omega omicron oplus or ordf ordm oslash otilde otimes ouml
para part permil perp phi pi piv plusmn pound prime prod prop psi
quot
radic rang raquo rarr rceil rdquo real reg rfloor rho rlm rsaquo rsquo
sbquo sdot sect shy sigma sigmaf sim spades sub sube sum sup1 sup2 sup3 sup supe szlig
tau there4 theta thetasym thinsp thorn times trade
uacute uarr ucirc ugrave uml upsih upsilon uuml
weierp
xi
yacute yen yuml
zeta zwj zwnj

/Cx"Entities (with case)"
AElig Aacute Acirc Agrave Alpha Aring Atilde Auml
Beta
Ccedil Chi
Dagger Delta
ETH Eacute Ecirc Egrave Epsilon Eta Euml
Gamma
Iacute Icirc Igrave Iota Iuml
Kappa
Lambda
Mu
Ntilde Nu
Oacute Ocirc Ograve Omega Omicron Oslash Otilde Ouml
Phi Pi Psi
Rho
Sigma
THORN Tau Theta
Uacute Ucirc Ugrave Upsilon Uuml
Xi
Yacute
Zeta
aacute acirc acute aelig agrave alefsym alpha amp and ang aring asymp atilde auml
bdquo beta brvbar bull
cap ccedil cedil cent chi clubs cong copy crarr cup curren
dArr dagger darr deg delta diams divide
eacute ecirc egrave empty emsp ensp epsilon equiv eta eth euml euro exist
forall frac12 frac14 frac34 frasl
gamma ge gt
hArr harr hearts hellip
iacute icirc iexcl igrave image infin int iota iquest isin iuml
kappa
lArr lambda lang laquo larr lceil ldquo le lfloor lowast loz lrm lsaquo lsquo lt
macr mdash micro middot minus mu
nabla nbsp ndash ne ni not notin nsub ntilde nu
oacute ocirc ograve oline omega omicron oplus or ordf ordm oslash otilde otimes ouml
para part permil perp phi pi piv plusmn pound prime prod prop psi
quot
rArr radic rang raquo rarr rceil rdquo real reg rfloor rho rlm rsaquo rsquo
sbquo sdot sect shy sigma sigmaf sim spades sub sube sum sup sup1 sup2 sup3 supe szlig
tau there4 theta thetasym thinsp thorn times trade
uArr uacute uarr ucirc ugrave uml upsih upsilon uuml
weierp
xi
yacute yen yuml
zeta zwj zwnj

[mary.vivit]

Thanks, Mofi. You're definitely correct about highlighting of correct entities, and I'd been thinking about the ramifications of setting this up. I'll give it a test run. If the highlighting becomes annoying, I'll back it out. Thanks, again!

Mary

[BenF]

With apologies to the estimable Mofi, I find a much simpler solution to the problem is to use the "Marker Characters" line to identify HTML entities, as in:

"/Marker Characters = "&;"

The &; pair is then added to your choice of color groups to specify the highlighting color.

This won't work for some non-conforming HTML pages, but the current W3C HTML/XHTML specs advise against using the "&" literal in page content, so the only thing appearing between "&" and ";" will be a "special character," or "entity." (And, of course - the "erroneous" highlighting will alert you to the presence of a non-conforming usage, e.g. "cats & dogs; fighting again.)

[mary.vivit]

Thanks, BenF. That did the trick! Thanks, too, to all for helping me get my coding environment just the way I want it!

Mary

[Mofi]

Good trick to use marker characters. It is really easier to define.

But at least the & must be defined in the delimiters list or entities inside a word are not highlighted. So the problem with entities splitting words still exist.

And a second disadvantage exists with the marker character solution, ALL characters between & and ; are highlighted, independent if this string is really an entity or not.

Big advantage of the marker character solution is that everyone can see easily, if the ; is missing at the end, which I have often seen on html pages created with Frontpage and pages created by a script. And second advantage is that everyone can see easily, if a & as text literal is not written as entity, as it always should be, which BenF has already explained.

So my solution approach is best for html creators which write html directly with UltraEdit like I. The marker character approach is best for users which use UltraEdit to view and verify html pages.

Thanks BenF for his contribution and his solution, which is more useful for most of the users.

[mary.vivit]

Thanks for the information, Mofi. When I get a chance, I'll implement your method, and compare the two solutions. I'm a coder, so I'd like to see both in action.

Mary