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At the moment, code posted to the chat rooms only differs in the font that's used. It would be nice if, like in comments, the code was highlighted by a different background colour. The way it is now, I sometimes get confused about where a piece of code ends.

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This works very well in comments. Can we have it in the chat rooms as well?

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    I like this idea. I have a hard time distinguishing between the regular face and the formatted font face in chat.
    – Marco Ceppi Mod
    Commented Aug 5, 2011 at 14:04
  • Agreed. The gist paste-ins even come in as non syntax aware monospace, unless i'm mistaken.
    – lazyPower
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 4:44
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    I've always wondered why the "code" looks different in the chat from the normal site!
    – Alvar
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 10:34
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    This might add to the clutter in chat. I suggest the highlighting to be much more subtle in chat than on the site.
    – N.N.
    Commented Aug 25, 2011 at 12:45
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    A possible long-term goal could be basic syntax highlighting like in gedit (within said code blocks of course). (Probably will never be supported, but I find it easier to interpret code if it's color-coded according to argument types.)
    – WindowsEscapist
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 19:50

1 Answer 1

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I don't think that's a very necessary need. A chat room is dominantly for chatting, where too much functionality can add to the chaos. For examples, suppose a chat with lots of background-highlighted code (or even syntax-highlighted), images, much icons, and other functionality. It'll be very disorderly and won't be conductive to the nature of "chats," which differ considerably from descriptive and detailed talking.

Most people are able to differentiate the main body and code body. Codes always have a different language than simple English, with the inclusion of many symbolic characters. That coupled with font-variation is well suited for this job.

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    I disagree with this as it is not always the case. Sometime your code is just one word in your sentence. Failing to notice that it's a code block can render your sentence meaningless or hard to understand.
    – Dan
    Commented Jul 22, 2014 at 6:18

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