Add code highlighting to your Google Waves

Google Wave is still rough around the edges, but it has a lot of potential in terms of becoming a great collaboration tool. As a developer, your first question will probably be: “How do I add code highlighting to my waves?”. The answer is straightforward, however not very easy to find if you google it. I hope this post will help fellow developers who are experimenting with Google Wave.

The following steps are required to obtain syntax highlighting for your code:

  1. Create a new wave and add the Syntaxy robot to your wave. Use the wave address: kasyntaxy@appspot.com.
  2. Reply to your first message or within it, thereby creating a reply (called “blip” in Google lingo).
  3. Specify your code’s language, prefixing the name with a hash and exclamation mark, like #!python or #!ruby.

At this point, as you type the code in your blip it will be highlighted by the Syntaxy bot as shown in the picture below:

Highlight code on Google Wave

More advanced automatic syntax highlighting bots will probably appear as Google Wave progresses, but this one should do the trick for now. On a side note, if you copy and paste code from XCode, the code formatting will be kept in your waves and blips without the need for bots.

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5 Comments

  1. David S.( @seemsArtless ) October 20, 2009
  2. Kevin November 13, 2009
  3. Prasad November 23, 2009
  4. Untit1ed November 30, 2009
  5. Martin January 27, 2010

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