# Discourse markup?

**URL:** <https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/t/discourse-markup/1872>\
**Category:** Site Feedback\
**Created:** [January 5, 2023, 4:46pm UTC](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/t/discourse-markup/1872 "2023-01-05T16:46:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![h.lenz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9adbd/32.png) [@h.lenz](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/u/h.lenz)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2023, 4:46pm UTC](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/t/discourse-markup/1872/1 "2023-01-05T16:46:21Z")

</div>

Perhaps I missed it somewhere or it is regarded just common knowledge: Is there a help page for the markdown language used here? I had to go to the HTML source, find out that the software used is named “Discourse” and google how to avoid it interpreting code with some wrong language:

```auto
This is not code but just text

```

vs.

```plaintext
This is not code but just text

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rtp\_derahs](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.commonvisionblox.com/rtp_derahs/32/79_2.png) [@rtp\_derahs](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/u/rtp_derahs)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2023, 8:26am UTC](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/t/discourse-markup/1872/2 "2023-01-11T08:26:00Z")

</div>

Hi @h.lenz

You need to specify the language for correct syntax highlighting.

```cpp

```cpp
This is highlighted like C++ code

```

```

vs

```python

```python
This is highlighted like Python code

```

```

With no language given, this version of markdown may guess a language? or just highlight common keywords like “is” and “not” as seen in your example.

Cheers  
Thomas

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![illusive](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.commonvisionblox.com/illusive/32/61_2.png) [@illusive](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/u/illusive)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2023, 8:55am UTC](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/t/discourse-markup/1872/3 "2023-01-11T08:55:45Z")

</div>

Tiny piece of additional background: Discourse uses [highlight.js (highlightjs.org)](https://highlightjs.org/static/demo/) for syntax highlighting. If no language tag is given, this library will try to guess the language (which with regular text output can yield funny results).

As the number of languages supported can have an impact on the render performance we have limited the usable syntax highlighting tags in this forum to

- bash
- cs
- cpp
- diff
- xml
- ini
- json
- makefile
- markdown
- python
- sql
- delphi
- cmake

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![h.lenz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9adbd/32.png) [@h.lenz](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/u/h.lenz)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2023, 12:53pm UTC](https://forum.commonvisionblox.com/t/discourse-markup/1872/4 "2023-01-11T12:53:52Z")

</div>

…and “txt” or “text” works if it should do nothing (and obviously also everything that it does not know as also “sdasdsad” works to stop guessing)