Sfdwhf

Yes you can, however the default syntax definitions are quite poor and incomplete. I'm maintaining a more accurate set of definitions here, for anyone who finds them useful.

To install, run:

git clone https://github.com/nanorc/nanorc.git

cd nanorc

make install

Add these lines to the ~/.nanorc

include ~/.nano/syntax/html.nanorc

include ~/.nano/syntax/css.nanorc

include ~/.nano/syntax/php.nanorc

include ~/.nano/syntax/ALL.nanorc

Specify the ones you want to have colorizing for, and you will have to tune these colors to your preferences. The ALL.nanorc describes features for all yet unclassified files. These are the tools you need to get started, not the end polished product.

I used this command to quickly enable all available languages.

find /usr/share/nano/ -iname "*.nanorc" -exec echo include {} ; >> ~/.nanorc

As mentioned in other answers, /usr/share/nano/ contains the definitions for different languages.

$ ls /usr/share/nano

asm.nanorc     fortran.nanorc   man-html       ocaml.nanorc   ruby.nanorc

awk.nanorc     gentoo.nanorc    man.nanorc     patch.nanorc   sh.nanorc

cmake.nanorc   groff.nanorc     mgp.nanorc     perl.nanorc    tcl.nanorc

c.nanorc       html.nanorc      mutt.nanorc    php.nanorc     tex.nanorc

css.nanorc     java.nanorc      nanorc.nanorc  pov.nanorc     xml.nanorc

debian.nanorc  makefile.nanorc  objc.nanorc    python.nanorc

Also mentioned, to enable highlighting for a language, you add include and the path to the language definition you want to enable to your ~/.nanorc file. So, for example, to enable C/C++ you would add this line.

include /usr/share/nano/c.nanorc

The find command searches for files or directories within the specified directory.

• The -iname flag tells it to only look for files with a name that ends with .nanorc.


• The -exec flags defines a command to execute on each file found.


• The {} gets replaced with the file name.


• 
  ; is used to signify the end of the command to execute to the find command.


• Lastly, >> ~/.nanorc causes the output to be appended to your ~/.nanorc file.

This should include all the syntax highlighting plugins included by default, and any you add to /usr/share/nano:

find /usr/share/nano -name '*.nanorc' -printf "include %pn" > ~/.nanorc

Or, edit /etc/nanorc and see if you can uncomment the includes.

This works if you have a version of nano that refuses to accept wildcards in the .nanorc file.

Just run this line every time you add an additional .nanorc colour config.

I have some nano syntax highlighting at my github.

There are live example screenshots for html and php:

and

You can use this to include all: (add this to ~/nanorc file)

include "/usr/share/nano/*.nanorc"

Happy coding !

wget -r -nH --cut-dirs=3 --no-parent --reject="index.html*" https://nanosyntax.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/syntax-nanorc/ -P ~/.nano-syntax

for i in `ls --color=never -1 ~/.nano-syntax/*.nanorc` ; do echo "include $i" >> ~/.nanorc ; done

The most complete and up to date syntax hilighters for nano are maintained here.

To install all highlighters for your user just run:

cd /tmp

git clone https://github.com/tech4david/nano-highlight.git

cd nano-highlight/

make install

echo "include ~/.nano/syntax/ALL.nanorc" >> ~/.nanorc

For those who are having trouble after following the instructions above, also check if you have duplicate definitions. These will disable all syntax highlighting for all files. I ran into this after adding a nanorc.nanorc file, and not realising that my ~/.nanorc already had an identical section, i.e.:

## Here is an example for nanorc files.

##

syntax "nanorc" ".?nanorc$"

## Possible errors and parameters

icolor brightwhite "^[[:space:]]*((un)?set|include|syntax|i?color).*$"

## Keywords

icolor brightgreen "^[[:space:]]*(set|unset)[[:space:]]+(autoindent|backup|$

icolor green "^[[:space:]]*(set|unset|include|syntax)>"

(...)

I found syntax highlighting for js here.

I appended it into my user file at ~/.nanorc

However to get a file into which I could append, I had to first copy from /usr/share/nano/nanorc.nanorc to my local folder first as ~/.nanorc.

I accidentally disabled highlighting using the keyboard shortcut Alt+Y. It can be turned on again with the same keyboard shortcut.

I just made this script to add the colours to nano:
But of course you got to have the color codes in /usr/share/nano for this to work.
If there are errors: just manually edit the ~/.nanorc file and remove the lines that give the errors.

#!/bin/bash



for i in `ls /usr/share/nano`

  do

    echo "include /usr/share/nano/$i" >> ~/.nanorc

  done