# Syntax highlighting of recent changes

Hello,
is there a simple way to highlight the diff printed in the [[/recentchanges]]
page? I imagined several solutions, but I am still wondering about the best one.

* One might activate the [[plugins/highlight]] and [[plugins/format]] plugins,
  and change the [[change.tmpl|/templates]] template, to use this plugin. But as
  the diff is formatted not to mess up html (e.g. `\[[link]]` becomes
  `&#91;&#91;link&#93;&#93;`), the output would be unreadable.
* One might improve [[plugins/recentchangesdiff]] plugin by adding an option
  `diff_escape_html=>yes/no` to it. Setting this to `no` would leave html
  unescaped, so that it would be correctly rendered by plugin
  [[plugins/format]].
* One might change the [[plugins/recentchangesdiff]] plugin, to add syntax
  highlighting to diffs, but this would duplicate plugin [[plugins/highlight]].

In my opinion, the second solution is the best one. However, to be neat the
`change.tmpl` template might detect that both plugin [[plugins/format]] and
`diff_escape_html` option are enabled, and, depending on it, output the diff
in `<pre>DIFF</pre>` tags or in the `\[[!format diff """DIFF"""]]` directive.

Letting user edit `change.tmpl` template to enable this feature is also
possible, but this would prevent him from benefiting of the later improvement
of this template. In my opinion, an ideal solution would require the user
nothing more than enabling some plugins or options.

-- Louis
