tomo/examples/colorful/README.md

Colorful Lang

Colorful is a lang that lets you write colorful text for the terminal without having to stress about managing state for color highlighting.

Grammar

The grammar looks like this:

colorful <- ("@(at)" / "@(lparen)" / "@(rparen)" # Escapes
             / "@(" attributes ":" colorful ")"  # Colorful text
             / .)*                               # Plain text

attributes <- (attribute ("," attribute)*)?

attribute <- color                   # Color defaults to foreground
             / "fg=" color           # Foreground color
             / "bg=" color           # Background color
             / "ul=" color           # Underline color
             / "b" / "bold"
             / "d" / "dim"
             / "u" / "underline"
             / "i" / "italic"
             / "B" / "blink"
             / "r" / "reverse"
             # These are rarely supported by terminals:
             / "fraktur"
             / "frame"
             / "encircle"
             / "overline"
             / "super" / "superscript"
             / "sub" / "subscript"

color <- "black" / "red" / "green" / "yellow" / "blue" / "magenta" / "cyan" / "white"
          # All caps colors are "bright" colors (not always supported):
          / "BLACK" / "RED" / "GREEN" / "YELLOW" / "BLUE" / "MAGENTA" / "CYAN" / "WHITE"
          / "default"
          / "#" 6 hex  # Values 0x000000-0xFFFFFF
          / "#" 3 hex  # Values 0x000-0xFFF
          / 1-3 digit  # Values 0-255

Command Line Usage

You can run colorful as a standalone executable to render colorful text with ANSI escape sequences so it looks nice on a terminal.

colorful [--help] [texts...] [--by-line] [--files ...]

Library Usage

colorful can also be used as a Tomo library:

use colorful

$Colorful"
    @(blue:Welcome to the @(bold:party)!)
    We have @(green,bold:colors)!
":print()

You can very easily introduce your own syntax highlighting for a custom DSL:

lang Markdown:
    func Colorful(md:Markdown -> Colorful):
        text := md.text:replace_all({
            $/@/="@(at)",
            $/(/="@(lparen)",
            $/)/="@(rparen)",
            $/**{..}**/="@(b:\1)",
            $/*{..}*/="@(i:\1)",
            $/[?](?)/="@(blue,underline:\1)",
        })
        return Colorful.from_text(text)

    func colorful(md:Markdown -> Colorful):
        return $Colorful"$md"
...

md := $Markdown"
    This is [a link with **bold** inside](example.com)!
"
>> colorful := md:colorful()
= $Colorful"This is @(blue,underline:a link with @(b:bold) inside)!"
>> colorful:for_terminal()
= "$\e[mThis is $\e[4;34ma link with $\e[1mbold$\e[22m inside$\e[24;39m!"
colorful:print()