Syntax Highlighting
Pure-Go syntax highlighting via Chroma.
SpiceEdit ships syntax highlighting for dozens of languages out of the box, powered by Chroma — a pure-Go syntax tokenizer with no CGO, no tree-sitter setup, and no external grammars to install.
How it works
When you open a file, SpiceEdit picks a Chroma lexer using these rules, in order:
- By filename.
main.go→ Go lexer.index.tsx→ TypeScript-with-JSX.Dockerfile→ Dockerfile. - By content. When the filename doesn’t match a known lexer, Chroma sniffs the first kilobyte for shebangs, XML prologues, and other magic markers.
- Fallback. Plain text — no highlighting, no errors.
Tokens map onto the editor’s Tokyo Night-inspired palette. Keywords, strings, numbers, comments, operators, types, function names, variables, and tags each get their own color, picked to be readable on the editor’s dark background.
Supported languages (the highlight-relevant subset)
Chroma supports hundreds of lexers; here’s the subset most users will hit day-to-day:
Systems / compiled. Go, Rust, C, C++, C#, Java, Kotlin, Swift, Objective-C, Zig, Crystal.
Scripting. Python, Ruby, Perl, Lua, Bash, Zsh, Fish, PowerShell, sh.
Web. JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, TSX, HTML, CSS, SCSS, Sass, Less, Vue, Svelte, Astro.
Backend / dynamic. PHP, Elixir, Erlang, Clojure, Scala, Haskell, OCaml, F#, R.
Markup / data. Markdown, JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, INI, CSV.
Infra / config. Dockerfile, Terraform, HCL, Nginx config, Apache config, Caddyfile, Makefile, CMake.
Database. SQL (Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, MSSQL flavors).
Other. Protocol Buffers, GraphQL, Thrift, JSON Schema, Diff/Patch.
If your language isn’t on this list, search Chroma’s lexer catalog — odds are it’s there.
The theme
Tokyo Night, baked in. There is no theming config — that’s deliberate. A code editor that looks the same on every machine is one less thing to argue about in a PR review. The palette is defined in internal/theme/theme.go if you want to fork.
Why Chroma instead of tree-sitter
Tree-sitter is great for structural editing — an LSP, an IDE, a linter that needs an AST. SpiceEdit doesn’t do any of that. It needs a stream of tokens with colors, and Chroma delivers that in pure Go with no native dependencies. Adding tree-sitter would mean CGO, grammar packaging, per-language setup, and platform-specific build steps. None of that fits a “single static binary” promise.