I don't think it's a good idea, and I'll try to explain why. The same reasons essentially apply for complete syntax highlighting.

It would be neeed to enforce that inside <CODE> elements one could type Perl code, and Perl code only. Otherwise the highlighting would be just noise. I've just used it to enclose HTML for example, where # is not a comment character.

Coloring in HTML is done through lengthy <FONT COLOR="#RRGGBB">...</FONT>, this would make pages longer with subsequently longer downloading times. It's certainly a minor problem now, thanks to style sheets in HTML 4.0.

It's probably unnecessary for short snippets, whereas for longer one it's always possible (and quick) to download the code and use the editor of choice. It's what we usually do anyway, when we need to take a deeper look at the code and maybe run it.

It would spoil some obfuscated code, or worse, it would not work correctly with it.

Just my two cents. No flames, no criticism :-)

-- TMTOWTDI

Update: thanks to John M. Dlugosz for pointing out the STYLE attribute approach to colouring text in modern HTML

In reply to Re: Feature request: Colourful comments? by trantor
in thread Feature request: Colourful comments? by Superlman

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.