add R syntax highlighting in Zed

[ndaniel]

The R programming language is a dynamic language built for statistical computing and graphics.

Add a builtin R extension/support for Zed, that would support R without requiring user to install extensions.

All major editors have builtin support for R programming language, like for example:

• VS code
• Sublime Text
• Notepad++

[warrenjokinen]

What are the pros and cons of
builtin support versus installed extension??

I see (only?) one extension for R ...
Is it lacking features? What specifically??

[ndaniel]

All serious text editors have builtin support for R language, and they do not require one to install R extensions.

Currently, zed does not have R syntax highlighting out of box for R programming language, even that R programming language is more popular than Rust language.

Zed should support out of box all the top 20 programming languages that are in TIOBE index: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

[SomeoneToIgnore]

https://github.com/ocsmit/zed-r

[ndaniel]

The point is that R should be support out of box and not require the user to install some extension because R is more popular than Rust.

[SomeoneToIgnore]

Not going to happen, Zed core tries to be as light as possible: adding yet another language into the core means pulling all tree-sitter dependencies, building and linking them each time.

No one in the team uses R so this all will be for nothing.

More: #35867

[ndaniel]

Any text editor considers this to be the core of programming languages:

• C / C++
• Python
• Java
• JavaScript
• HTML + CSS
• R
• Bash / Shell
• Markdown

That’s the minimum baseline that VS Code, Sublime, Atom, Notepad++ and even Kate or Geany already meet.