Understanding <contexts> in KDE Syntax Highlighting .xml codes

Development
1

Hi, I am trying to achieve the following goals to finally make a minimal case syntax highlighting file.

  1. Strings that matches " #( |$|(#)+).* " gets treated as if it was a comment.
  2. Strings that matches " #@cli.* " are treated as if they’re a comment.
  3. Strings that matches " \$(-\d+|\w+|\d+) " gets treated as if they’re accessed variables.
  4. Strings that matches " \w+: " are treated as if they’re commands names.
  5. Any texts under control-flow list gets highlighted as long as they’re outside any characters between “” and of course, taking into account of / being used as escape character.
  6. #@gui gets bolded.
  7. Anything between “” gets highlighted.

All of them must be configurable.

EDIT: My current KDE Syntax Highlighting code is in last post.

3

Ok, I did what I could for now. I’d still like to resolve the harder part which is highlighting a large section of code with quotation mark, and #@gui codes.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE language SYSTEM "language.dtd"
[
]>

<language
    name="G'MIC"
    version=".01"
    kateversion="5.79"
    section="Development Syntax Highlighting"
    extensions="*.gmic"
    mimetype="application/x-shellscript"
    casesensitive="1"
    author="Miguel Lopez (reptillia39@live.com)"
    license="LGPL"
>
    
    <highlighting>
        <list name="control-flow">
            <item>apply_timeout</item>
            <item>check</item>
            <item>check3d</item>
            <item>do</item>
            <item>done</item>
            <item>if</item>
            <item>elif</item>
            <item>else</item>
            <item>fi</item>
            <item>exec</item>
            <item>exec_out</item>
            <item>for</item>
            <item>foreach</item>
            <item>l</item>
            <item>local</item>
            <item>mutex</item>
            <item>noarg</item>
            <item>onfail</item>
            <item>parallel</item>
            <item>progress</item>
            <item>quit</item>
            <item>repeat</item>
            <item>return</item>
            <item>rprogress</item>
            <item>run</item>
            <item>skip</item>
            <item>while</item>            
        </list>
        
        <list name="loop-control-flow">
            <item>continue</item>
            <item>break</item>
        </list>
    
        <contexts>
            
            <context attribute="Normal Text" lineEndContext="#pop" name="BashOneLine" fallthroughContext="Command">
                <RegExpr attribute="CLI Header" context="#stay" String="#@cli.*" beginRegion="Fold"/>
                <RegExpr attribute="Command Names" context="#stay" String="^\+?([a-zA-Z0-9_]*)+\s?:( |$)" beginRegion="Fold"/>
                <RegExpr attribute="Accessed-Variables" context="#stay" String="(?&lt;!^#)(?&lt;!#\$)\$\$??(\{)?(?(1)-?\d+--?\d+(:\d+}|})|(-?\d+|\w+|!|&gt;|&lt;|\/|\||\*|#|\^))" beginRegion="Fold"/>
                <RegExpr attribute="Comments" context="#stay" String="(\w|^|\s)(#\w+$|#\s+.*|#+$|#--+.*|#@gmic)"/>
                <keyword attribute="Control Flow"  context="#stay" String="control-flow" />
                <keyword attribute="Loop Control Flow"  context="#stay" String="loop-control-flow" />
                <RegExpr attribute="Error" context="#stay" String="\berror\b" beginRegion="Fold"/>
            </context>
            
        </contexts>
        
        <itemDatas>
            <itemData name="Normal Text" defStyleNum="dsNormal" />
            <itemData name="CLI Header" defStyleNum="dsDocumentation" />
            <itemData name="Command Names" defStyleNum="dsFunction" />
            <itemData name="Accessed-Variables" defStyleNum="dsVariable" />
            <itemData name="Comments" defStyleNum="dsComment" />
            <itemData name="Control Flow" defStyleNum="dsKeyword" />
            <itemData name="Loop Control Flow" defStyleNum="dsAlert" />
            <itemData name="Error" defStyleNum="dsError" />
        </itemDatas>
    
    </highlighting>

</language>

EDIT: The final thing I want to do is to highlight every section of code between quotation mark, and that factors into escape character. And doing this while preserving highlights of other code.

So far, I have this:

4

Ok, I finally figured it out how syntax highlighting works. That being said, I have issues getting regex matching on multiple lines and from what I see, that’s a big limitation of KDE Kate. I will have to use other workaround.