xlistings — An extension to listings

This package extends on the listings package, providing an easier front-end to create code blocks of selected languages, support for number highlighting, highlighting, non-selectable line numbers,^1 and more. While it is not compatible with the minted package, it provides a similar interface for code highlighting that can be used as a partial drop-in replacement (see the documentation).

The following describes a list of improvements over the listings package:

• Highlighting of numbers in code blocks: 10_234 + x1 * 0x34 - x2, including hexadecimal digits, exponents, and language sensitive type suffixes (0xdeadBEEF, 1e10, 10L in Java, 3j in Python, 10n in TypeScript)
• Support for the \begin{minted}{<lang>} . . . \end{minted} environment
• Wrapper macros like \bjava{int i} and \cjava{int i} and environments like \begin{plainjava}
• \xlstb{<lang>}{<code>} for languages whose name cannot be part of a command name, e.g. \xlstb{x86}{mov eax, 0x10}
• Language sensitive override: \xlstlangoverride{latex}{morekeywords=[5]{\\xlstsetstyle}}
• Support for (accsupp based) non-selectable line numbers and characters
• Support for blacklisting line numbers with \xlstblacklistlinenumbers
• Support for umlauts and UTF-8 encoding (with the listingsutf8 package)
• Provides autogobble to remove leading spaces (with the lstautogobble package)
• Comfort key add to literate to add elements to the literate list
• \LoadLanguages{<lang>} to load a language or multiple languages on demand
• Opinionated language overwrites (see the langs/ folder)
• Opinionated default literates such as :ldots:, :lan:, :to:, and :c:

The package is set up for l3build: l3build check runs the tests in tests/ and fails if a highlight changes unexpectedly. Each test states the sequence of styles it expects, and the resulting build/test/<name>.pdf shows the verdict together with the typeset sample, so the highlighting can also be inspected visually. A colour that leaks past its segment is invisible to such a trace, so tests/colorbleed.pvt additionally compares the pdf, reduced to the colour every piece of text is drawn in.

a number is truly non-selectable depends on the viewer used. To ensure that they can not be selected would require images, which we currently do not create/use.