highlight.js vs CodeHilite & Pygments

Description

Why bothering with CodeHilite and Pygments when mkdocs officialy and natively supports the much better highlight.js?

See https://www.mkdocs.org/user-guide/styling-your-docs/#mkdocs

Expected behavior

Syntax highlight works out of the box thanks to highlight.js

Actual behavior

Syntax highlight is not working because it requires CodeHilite marodwn extension to be enabled and Pygments python dependency to be installed.

See https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/extensions/codehilite

Steps to reproduce the bug

Not relevant.

Package versions

• Python: python --version: Python 3.7.3
• MkDocs: mkdocs --version: mkdocs, version 1.0.4 from /usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/mkdocs (Python 3.7)
• Material: pip show mkdocs-material | grep -E ^Version: Version: 4.4.0

Project configuration

Not relevant.

System information

• OS: ArchLinux
• Browser: Firefox

[facelessuser]

FYI, previous discussion on this: https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material/issues/1004.

[facelessuser]

supports the much better highlight.js

This is a subjective statement. This is simply a matter of preference.

mkdocs officialy and natively supports

The official mkdocs theme official supports it. Mkdocs itself doesn’t particularly care what you use.

Highlight.js will pick up on language declarations assuming assume they are specified, which would require you to use CodeHilite even if you don’t want to use Pygments. Unless you really only on highlight.js guessing, which can be hit or miss.

It’s not too hard to configure CodeHilite to not use Pygments and then include highlight.js via the Mkdocs extra_js option.

Ultimately, it is the theme’s choice what to support our of the box. But there is nothing stopping people from using highlight.js.