Sat
01
May 2010

Some time ago I've created a syntax highlighting mode of HLSL language (the shader language of DirectX) for jEdit - my favourite text editor. It is now included in the official jEdit distribution. But it wasn't updated for a long time, since Shader Model 2. Now I've created a new version that supports all the features of new DirectX shaders and effects up to these from DirectX 11 (Shader Model 5), including ones from the upcoming June 2010 version.

So if you don't use jEdit, just keep in mind that there is probably no other text editor (which I would know about) with a coloring scheme for shader language. (I know AMD RenderMonkey and NVIDIA Fx Composer do that, but these are big shader IDE-s, not just text editors.) And if you do, here is how to install it. Download the file:

hlsl.xml

Place it in your jEdit's "modes" subdirectory, e.g.: "C:\Program Files (x86)\jEdit 4.3.1\modes" and replace the existing one. That's all. You can double-click on the right part of the status bar in jEdit to open the Buffer Options window and select Edit mode = "hlsl".

But it's better to associate this coloring scheme with some file extensions. To do that, open file: "C:\Program Files (x86)\jEdit 4.3.1\modes\catalog", comment out the "javafx" mode as it owns the "fx" file extension by defalt:

<!--<MODE NAME="javafx"    FILE="javafx.xml"
        FILE_NAME_GLOB="*.fx" />-->

Then find and alter the entry about "hlsl" mode to associate it with whatever file extension you use for your shaders, like the example:

<MODE NAME="hlsl"    FILE="hlsl.xml"
        FILE_NAME_GLOB="*.{fx,hlsl}" />

If you edit this file inside jEdit, you don't even have to restart it - new rules are applied automatically.

You may ask why not just use the C++ coloring scheme for shader code? Of course you can do it, the syntax is similar because all the tokens, like strings, numbers and identifiers look the same way. But my coloring schemes give separate colors for language elements such as: semantics (like c:COLOR0), component indexing (like v.xyzz), atomic types (like float), object types (like Texture2D or RWStructuredBuffer) and intrinsic functions (like sin, cos, InterlockedCompareExchange).

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