# Coding language syntax highlighting

#### Theia

##### Well-known member
I tried the code tags and its syntax highlighting feature in case of python. I was satisfied with the result, many thanks!

However, I'd like to ask, if there was possible to add more coding languages? Fortran 90, for example, is one of my favourites, but there are some others too which might be useful, like R, gnuplot, octave, mathematica. How's the case?

#### MarkFL

Staff member
Yes, it is possible to add available languages to the code BBCode. In fact, we recently added LaTeX to the default XenForo package. Here is a page showing the additional languages that can be added:

• Fortran
• R

#### Klaas van Aarsen

##### MHB Seeker
Staff member
Octave is an open source version of MatLab. And MatLab is in the list.
It's a good addition here as a mathematical language.

It looks like this (from a previous post):
MatLab:
function [t2, y2] = trapezoid_method(N)
h=1/N;
A=[-5 -2;-2 -100];
y=[1;1];
t2=[0];
y2=[y];
for (i=1:N)
y=(eye(2)+h*A+h^2/2*A^2)*y;
t2=[t2, i*h];
y2=[y2, y];
end for
end function

[t2, y2] = trapezoid_method(10)

Last edited:

#### MarkFL

Staff member
Octave is an open source version of MatLab. And MatLab is in the list.
It's a good addition here as a mathematical language.
Okay, would you recommend any others? I will add Fortran and Matlab and R (if @Jameson would want that as I know he has used it for statistical analysis).

#### Klaas van Aarsen

##### MHB Seeker
Staff member
R is a good one. Pops up every now on then here.
We might add APL, SAS, which are also mathematical languages. I haven't seen them on MHB though, so it's probably not worth it.
The big missing one is Mathematica, which is the same as the well known Wolfram|Alpha.

#### MarkFL

Staff member
R is a good one. Pops up every now on then here.
We might add APL, SAS, which are also mathematical languages. I haven't seen them on MHB though, so it's probably not worth it.
The big missing one is Mathematica, which is the same as the well known Wolfram|Alpha.
The js files needed to add support for each language are tiny, and if I'm doing one, I might as well do whatever else we want. I view you as MHB's resident coding guru, so I'll add whatever you think would be good. Maybe someone will add Mathematica in the future.

#### Jameson

Staff member
This is an interesting topic! The software used in the academic math world is often very different than the business world from my experience. In school I used SAS and R almost entirely. Most companies today don't want to pay the huge cost of a SAS license and deal with the closed source nature of it either. R is still used for more advanced statistical projects I think, but Python has really taken over everywhere due to its extremely versatile nature.That's just my own view of the software changes and it's likely US centric.

So for this task though, I agree with @MarkFL if adding more languages is negligible then easiest to just add all of them or all within reason. Don't need to let something like highlighting syntax be the thing that makes a new user leave out of frustration.

#### MarkFL

Staff member
Okay, I have added support for the following languages:
• APL
• Fortran
• MatLab
• R
• SAS
I added them to the list of supported languages in alphabetical order, and XenForo doesn't preserve that order for some reason, but they're there.