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Languages & highlighting

Syntax highlighting

Highlighting uses TextMate grammars through tm4e. When you open a file, Editora maps its extension (or, for a Dockerfile, its name) to a bundled grammar and tokenizes the document line by line. Tokenization is stateful, so block comments and heredocs highlight correctly across lines, and incremental, so an edit re-tokenizes only from the changed line, off the UI thread. Token colors come from the active editor theme.

Files without a bundled grammar are left unstyled rather than guessed at.

Supported languages

Grammars ship for Java, Astro, XML, shell, PowerShell, DOS batch, Python, Groovy, Kotlin, Ruby, C, C++, Rust, Go, C#, Markdown, JSON, CSS, HTML, YAML, INI, SQL, TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, Lua, Dockerfile, Terraform, TOML, Mermaid, and the HTTP request format. The TypeScript grammar also covers plain JavaScript.

Astro files use the official Astro TextMate grammar, including mixed frontmatter, HTML, and CSS regions. The same language integration supplies Structure symbols and can connect to astro-ls for code intelligence.

Folding, comment syntax, and auto-indent rules are wired per language alongside the grammar. Many extension-less dotfiles and named config files (e.g. .editorconfig, .gitignore and other .*ignore files) are matched by name, so they get highlighting too (and the matching language server when enabled).

When the file name says nothing

A file whose name gives no language (an extension-less script, or a .txt file) takes it from its own first lines:

• A shebang on the first line: #!/bin/sh, #!/usr/bin/env bash, #!/usr/bin/env -S bash -e, #!/usr/bin/env -u NAME bash, #!/bin/busybox sh, and the same for zsh, dash, ksh, mksh, ash and Bats, as well as Python, Node, Deno, Bun, Ruby, PHP, Lua, Groovy and PowerShell interpreters. A version suffix is ignored (python3.12 is Python). A java shebang counts when a --source N follows it (#!/usr/bin/env -S java --source 25).
• A modeline, when there is no shebang Editora knows: a vim modeline in the first or last five lines (# vim: ft=sh, # vim: set filetype=bash :), or an emacs line on the first line, or the second after a shebang (# -*- mode: sh -*-, # -*- sh -*-).

A shebang typed into a new or extension-less file switches the language once you stop typing. An extension or name that gives a language always wins over both.

To set the language yourself, click the language in the status bar, or run Buffer: Set Language… (buffer.setLanguage). The choice applies at once to everything that depends on the language: highlighting, comment syntax, the status bar, the tab’s file-type icon, the language server, and the Run ▶ for scripts. It lasts while the file stays open.

Java scripts

A Java file without a .java name, such as an extension-less java --source 25 shebang script or a file set to Java in the status bar, is served by the Java language server when it is set up, like a .java file: completion, hover, the outline and syntax errors. A completion that adds an import puts it below the #! line, so the script still runs. The server sees the script on its own, outside any project, so it reports syntax errors but not type errors, as for any .java file outside a project. This works for scripts on this machine, not for one in a remote folder. See Run & debug for running and debugging one.

Shell scripts

These open as shell scripts (bash, zsh, ksh and POSIX sh share one grammar):

• Extensions: .sh, .bash, .zsh, .ksh, .mksh, .command, .bats, .ebuild, .eclass, and names ending in .bashrc, .zshrc or .profile.
• Startup files, such as .bashrc, .bash_profile, .bash_login, .bash_logout, .bash_aliases, .profile, .zshrc, .zshenv, .zprofile, .zlogin, .zlogout, .kshrc, .mkshrc, .xinitrc, .xprofile, .xsession, .bashrc.local and .zshrc.local, plus direnv’s .envrc.
• System copies: /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc, /etc/bash.bashrc, /etc/zshrc and the files in /etc/zsh/.
• Other names: the mvnw and gradlew build wrappers, PKGBUILD and APKBUILD package recipes, and bash-completion scripts (anything in a bash-completion/completions or bash_completion.d folder).
• Any file with a shell shebang or modeline, as above.

The shell grammar is the one VS Code uses, with Editora’s own fixes. Commands, keywords, variables, quoted strings, here-doc text and comments are coloured; a command’s bare arguments and options are plain text. Here-docs end at their delimiter in every form (<<EOF, <<-EOF, <<'EOF', <<"EOF", <<\EOF), $(( … )) is coloured as arithmetic, the right side of [[ … =~ … ]] as a regular expression, and the ) that ends a case pattern is not counted by bracket-pair colorization. zsh files use the same grammar, so zsh-only syntax such as ${(k)map} stays plain.

zsh startup files (.zshrc, .zprofile, /etc/zsh/zshenv and the like) are not opened on the Bash language server: nothing in them says they are zsh, so it would check them as bash and report valid zsh as errors. .zsh scripts stay on the server. See Language servers for the Bash server, and Run & debug for running scripts.

Autocomplete

Completion appears as you type, debounced and kept off the hot path. Java member completion triggers immediately after ., while identifier completion begins after a short pause. Other word completion won’t trigger below a two-character prefix.

• Code buffers get a popup that merges sources and ranks them: language-server results (when LSP is on), then snippets. Press Enter or Tab to accept. Complete result lists filter locally and obsolete server requests are cancelled as you keep typing. Accepting a snippet starts a tab-stop session; accepting a Java LSP item can safely add its import after continued typing, grouped with the completion as one undo/redo action.
• Prose buffers (plain text and Markdown) get inline ghost text, a muted suffix you accept with Tab.

Trigger manually with C-M-i or M-/. Completion also fires on a language server’s advertised trigger characters, so < in HTML or : in CSS pops the popup. In the popup, Up / Down and C-n / C-p move the selection, and Esc or C-g dismisses it.

The code popup is IntelliJ-style: per-kind icons (class, method, keyword, snippet, and so on), the matched characters highlighted, deprecated items struck through, and a documentation popup beside the list. The docs popup shows automatically and toggles with C-q (Edit: Toggle Completion Documentation).

Toggles live in Settings → Code Completion: a master switch plus per-source switches for words (prose), snippets, and Mermaid keywords. Palette equivalents are view.toggleAutocomplete and the per-source variants.

Spell checking

Misspelled words get a red wavy underline. Right-click for suggestions (pick one to replace), Add to Dictionary, or Ignore. Ignore stops flagging the word in every open file until Editora is closed; Add to Dictionary keeps it for good.

What is checked depends on the file type:

• Plain text and Markdown are checked in full, apart from inline code and link addresses; in Markdown, fenced code blocks, front matter, link definitions, HTML tags and lint directives are skipped too, while link text and image alt text are checked.
• HTML and Typst have the document’s text checked, plus comments. Tags, attributes, <script>, <style> and <pre> blocks, Typst math and Typst lines that open with a # instruction are left alone.
• Source code has only comments and string literals checked, so identifiers aren’t flagged. In shell scripts a command’s bare arguments and options (pipefail, package names, -xzf) are not checked; quoted strings, here-doc text and comments are.
• Data and configuration formats are off by default: JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, CSV, INI, properties, .env, Git and SSH configuration, system configuration files, logs, and diffs.

Settings → Spell Check → File Types has a tick box per file type, and Spell Check: Toggle for This File Type (spell.toggleForLanguage) flips the active file’s type. view.toggleSpellCheck turns checking on or off everywhere.

Spell-check commands

Everything on the right-click menu is also a command, so you can work through a file from the keyboard.

Correct Word at Caret opens a list of suggestions to filter and pick from. The other keymaps bind the navigation keys: in CUA, F7 and Shift+F7 go to the next and previous misspelling; in Sublime Text, F6 toggles spell check and Ctrl+F6 / Ctrl+Shift+F6 go to the next and previous misspelling.

Dictionaries

Spell check uses Apache Lucene’s pure-Java Hunspell engine, with no native dependency. English (US and UK), Spanish (Spain and Mexico), and French ship in the app. The default dictionary is set in Settings → Spell Check. The status bar shows the dictionary the active file is checked with; click it, or run Spell Check: Set Language…, to give the file another one. The picker lists the languages by name, marks the current one, and has an entry that returns the file to the default.

Words you add live in dictionary.txt in your config folder. Settings → Spell Check has an editor for the list (spell.manageDictionary) and a switch that turns the personal dictionary off. After editing dictionary.txt outside Settings, run Spell Check: Reload Personal Dictionary.

A bundled technical-terms dictionary (config, async, middleware, kubernetes, and the like) keeps code-adjacent words from being flagged in any language; toggle it in Settings or with view.toggleTechnicalDictionary.