The Highlight Definition XML Format
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The Highlight Definition XML Format

Overview

This section is an overview of the Highlight Definition XML format. It will describe the main components and their meaning and usage, and go into detail with the detection rules.

The formal definition, aka the DTD is stored in the file language.dtd which should be installed on your system in the folder $KDEDIR/share/apps/kate/syntax.

Main components of Kate Highlight Definitions

The General Section

The General Section contains information on the comment format of the described language, and defines whether keywords are case sensitive.

Highlighting

The Highlighting section contains all data required to analyze and render the text. This includes:

ItemDatas

Contains ItemData elements, each defining a style.

Keyword lists

Each list has a name, and may contain any number of items.

Contexts

Contains contexts, which again contain the syntax detection rules.

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