Connect syntax highlighting to MIME type, if a file has no extension

[kenderipa]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Hello, first of all, thanks for the great minimalistic editor! However, if an opened file doesn't have an extension, syntax highlighting doesn't work.

Describe the solution you'd like
Would it be possible in a few LOCs to activate syntax highlighting based on MIME type?

Describe alternatives you've considered
Deal with it or continue using heavy and bloated vim.

Additional context
As an example, .jwmrc (text/xml) doesn't have any highlighting.

Thanks in advance!

[ilai-deutel]

Hi @kenderipa,

I think this feature request is reasonable, thanks for the idea!

The main question is, how to determine the MIME type of a file? We shouldn't add new Rust dependencies to the project (which would be against the spirit of the LOC limit), so depending on an external crate is out of question.

One option could be to try to interface with a shared system library or execute an external program once when opening a file, to guess the MIME type. On Linux, the libmagic library and file binary are often available by default.

file --mime-type .jwmrc
.jwmrc: text/xml

We would need to call it and handle errors (e.g. library or binary not found), and provide a configuration option to disable MIME type guessing (or make it opt-in if there are a lot of false-positives).

---

As an aside:

As an example, .jwmrc (text/xml) doesn't have any highlighting.

For specific known extensions like that one, feel free to create a PR to update the extension list here: here.

[ilai-deutel]

@all-contributors Please add @kenderipa for ideas.

[allcontributors]

@ilai-deutel

I've put up a pull request to add @kenderipa! 🎉

[kenderipa]

As an aside:

As an example, .jwmrc (text/xml) doesn't have any highlighting.

For specific known extensions like that one, feel free to create a PR to update the extension list here: here.

Did you mean adding .jwmrc as an extension because it's a hidden file? Doesn't seem to work.

[ilai-deutel]

You're right, it is not currently detected as an extension. I opened #447 to track the feature request, I'll commit the change in the next couple days