Syntax highlighting for Snakemake (and Nextflow) language snippets

[tbooth]

Hi,

I'm currently working on https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/snakemake-novice-bioinformatics which includes many snippets of Snakemake syntax. Snakemake is a superset of Python, so elsewhere in the incubator (eg. https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/workflows-snakemake) these code blocks are just marked as {. :language-python}. This is not ideal as the header for the code block then says "Python". I've been using simply {. :language} as I write new lessons, but of course this leaves all the code monochrome and the header just says "Code".

I'm not sure how the syntax highlighting engine works in all this, but would it be possible to:

Ideally, add Snakemake-specific support, if a compatible syntax definition is available (I know some editors like Vim have support already).

Or else, provide a {. :language-snakemake} option which activates Python3 syntax highlighting but changes the heading of the code cell to "Snakemake". This will be much better than what we have now, and if a full Snakemake syntax highlighter ever becomes available in future then no change to the lessons will be needed to take advantage of it.

I know a similar change would be good for https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/workflows-nextflow. In this case the language would be "Nextflow" and if a full Nextflow highlighter is not available then Groovy syntax would be appropriate.

Cheers,
Tim