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josephholsten/highlight-names.md

Last active September 6, 2025 23:45
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Tree Sitter Highlight Classes
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highlight-names.md

I've noticed that some of the themes in helix are using undocumented highlight selectors. Well that's no surprise, these are comming from highlight.scm files in tree-sitter grammars, while the least terrible reference to these classes seems to be https://docs.helix-editor.com/themes.html

We can do better. So first I'm going to just start collecting notes from existing grammars. Two main things will be here: references to "standard" classes, and also guidance for how to change "non-standard" classes.

Standard

Current doc source: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/blob/master/book/src/themes.md

  • attribute - Class attributes, HTML tag attributes

  • type - Types

    • builtin - Primitive types provided by the language (int, usize)
    • parameter - Generic type parameters (T)
    • enum
      • variant

  • constructor

  • constant (TODO: constant.other.placeholder for %v)

    • builtin Special constants provided by the language (true, false, nil etc)
      • boolean
    • character
      • escape
    • numeric (numbers)
      • integer
      • float

  • string (TODO: string.quoted.{single, double}, string.raw/.unquoted)?

    • regexp - Regular expressions
    • special
      • path
      • url
      • symbol - Erlang/Elixir atoms, Ruby symbols, Clojure keywords

  • comment - Code comments

    • line - Single line comments (//)
    • block - Block comments (e.g. (/* */)
      • documentation - Documentation comments (e.g. /// in Rust)

  • variable - Variables

    • builtin - Reserved language variables (self, this, super, etc.)
    • parameter - Function parameters
    • other
      • member - Fields of composite data types (e.g. structs, unions)

  • label

  • punctuation

    • delimiter - Commas, colons
    • bracket - Parentheses, angle brackets, etc.
    • special - String interpolation brackets.

  • keyword

    • control
      • conditional - if, else
      • repeat - for, while, loop
      • import - import, export
      • return
      • exception
    • operator - or, in
    • directive - Preprocessor directives (#if in C)
    • function - fn, func
    • storage - Keywords describing how things are stored
      • type - The type of something, class, function, var, let, etc.
      • modifier - Storage modifiers like static, mut, const, ref, etc.

  • operator - ||, +=, >

  • function

    • builtin
    • method
    • macro
    • special (preprocessor in C)

  • tag - Tags (e.g. <body> in HTML)

    • builtin

  • namespace

  • special

  • markup

    • heading
      • marker - the
      • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - heading text for h1 through h6
    • list
      • unnumbered
      • numbered
      • checked
      • unchecked
    • bold
    • italic
    • strikethrough
    • link
      • url - URLs pointed to by links
      • label - non-URL link references
      • text - URL and image descriptions in links
    • quote
    • raw - verbatim code or equations
      • inline
      • block

  • diff - version control changes

    • plus - additions
      • gutter - gutter indicator UNUSED
    • minus - deletions
      • gutter - gutter indicator UNUSED
    • delta - modifications
      • moved - renamed or moved files/changes
      • gutter - gutter indicator UNUSED

Non-Standard

  • boolean -> constant.builtin.boolean
  • repeat -> keyword.control.repeat, or possibly function.builtin
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