Adding syntax highlighting for new languages to Eclipse with the Colorer library

1 minute read

Say you have an HRC file containing the syntax and lexical structure of some programming language Eclipse does not support (for example D).

Using the EclipseColorer plugin, you can easily add support for it. For this tutorial I’ll be using Eclipse Classic 3.7.2 32-bit.

Go to Help -> Install New Software and click Add..
In the Name field write Colorer and in the Location field write http://colorer.sf.net/eclipsecolorer/

Select the entry you’ve just added in the work with: combo box, wait for the component list to populate and click Select All
Click Next and follow the instructions
Once the plugin is installed, close Eclipse
Copy your HRC file to [EclipseFolder]\plugins\net.sf.colorer\0.9.9\colorer\hrc\auto\types
Use your favorite text editor to open [EclipseFolder]\plugins\net.sf.colorer\0.9.9\colorer\hrc\auto\empty.hrc
Add the appropriate prototype element. For example, if your HRC file is d.hrc, empty.hrc will look like this:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding='Windows-1251'?>
    <!DOCTYPE hrc PUBLIC
    "-//Cail Lomecb//DTD Colorer HRC take5//EN"
    "http://colorer.sf.net/2003/hrc.dtd"
    >
    <hrc version="take5" xmlns="http://colorer.sf.net/2003/hrc"
    xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://colorer.sf.net/2003/hrc http://colorer.sf.net/2003/hrc.xsd"
    ><annotation><documentation>
    'auto' is a place for include
    to colorer your own HRCs
   </documentation></annotation>
   <prototype name="d" group="main" description="D">
    <location link="types/d.hrc"/>
    <filename>/.(d)$/i</filename>
    </prototype>
   </hrc> 

Save the changes and close the text editor
Open Eclipse and go to Window -> Preferences -> General -> Editors -> File Associations
In the file types section, click Add.. and fill in the appropriate filetype (for example .d)
Click OK and click your newly added entry in the list
In the associated editors section, click Add.., select Colorer Editor and press OK