A syntax highlighting specification

In light of the Skywriter-Cloud9 collaboration, I've been working on a specification for cross-browser syntax highlighting engines. I now have something to announce, and I'm thrilled to have been able to work with not only the Skywriter team, but also Fabian Jakobs of Cloud9 and Marijn Haverbeke of CodeMirror fame, to develop a unified syntax highlighting specification for JavaScript code editors.

The idea is that people can share syntax highlighting engines across a variety of JavaScript code editors and viewers. Syntax highlighters are simple to create and are essentially a state machine consisting of JavaScript regexes. Here's an example of a simple diff/patch highlighter in this format:

exports.getInfo = function() {
    return {
        name: "diff",
        fileexts: [ "diff", "patch" ],
        mimetypes: [ "application/x-diff" ]
    };
}

exports.getRules = function() {
    return {
        start: [
            { regex: /\+.*/, token: 'addition.diff' },
            { regex: /-.*/, token: 'deletion.diff' },
            { regex: /.*/, token: 'plain' }
        ]
    };
}

As you can see, the format is very simple to get started with. But it's also fairly powerful: it supports nested syntax highlighting modes (for JavaScript inside HTML and the like), multiple states (so that strings and comments can be highlighted correctly), and all the features of JavaScript regexes.

It's my hope that this format will allow greater sharing among code editors. We're hoping to implement this soon in the Skywriter/Cloud9 codebase. The specification can be found here in an EtherPad, and I'd be very grateful for any and all feedback!