OVERVIEW

I wanted to be able to copy a snippet of source code from my text editor, convert it into color-coded HTML, and paste that into my blog. I found some Windows programs for this but I'm a Linux user. So I wrote my own in Python.

code2blog is a pyGTK front-end to Lorenzo Bettini's excellent command-line utility GNU/Source-Highlight. The goal of this utility is easy conversion of source code into HTML. It supports multiple languages and output formats. You can specify tab size and line numbering.

GNU/Source Highlight supports more options than code2blog offers. I left php and php3 out of the language list because they didn't work on my system (missing language files).

USAGE

code2blog uses two windows; Input and Output. Put your source in Input, get your markup from Output.

• Open Loads source from a text file
• Paste Paste from the sytem clipboard into the Input window.
• Clear Clears the Input Window

• Apply Calls GNU/Source Highlight to create the marked up version in the Output Window. All the output is also selected so you can Copy it.

• Save Save the Output window to a text file
• Copy Copies from the Output Window to the system clipboard.
• Clear Clear the Output Window

• About Show the About Dialog
• Quit Exit the program

Let's say we're editing a program in our favorite text editor and have a snippet of code we want to blog. Copy the section to the clipboard, switch to code2blog and click Paste, Apply, Copy. Then go into your blog and paste it. For Blogger.com, use the Compose view, not the HTML view. Yes, I know that seems backwards.

WARNING

The only way to ruin a file is if you don't understand the save option. This ONLY saves the output window, i.e. the converted output from GNU/Source Highlight. Please do not save using the name of one of your source files -- code2blog is not meant to be a text a editor.

REQUIREMENTS

• Python >= 2.4 (http://www.python.org)
• pyGTK >= 2.6 (http://www.pygtk.org)
• GNU/Source Highlight >= 2.3 (http://www.gnu.org/software/src-highlite)

My Linux box with a Gnome desktop already had Python + PyGTK. My distro uses YUM and I was able to install GNU/Source Highlight with:

$ su
# yum install source-highlight

QUICK INSTALLATION

$ cd ~/bin
$ wget http://code2blog.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/code2blog
$ chmod +x code2blog

OTHERFILES

I'm including three other files for anyone that would like to modify code2blog:

• code2blog.py is the same thing as code2blog, except it loads the pyGTK interface from the file code2blog.glade.

• code2blog.glade and code2blog.gladep are the files for the Glade GUI designer (http://glade.gnome.org/).

TODO

I really should add a function to pick the proper source file type when loading files.

CREDITS

Lorenzo Bettini for GNU/Source Highlight. John Finlay and the pyGTK team for pyGTK which makes this kind of thing silly easy.