Listings for plain tex

Question

Is there a package to produce syntax-colored blocks of source code in plain TeX ? A listings equivalent ? Or (maybe) some macro to produce a colored tex input for some given source code ? Is it possible to achieve something through LuaTeX ?

Answer 1

The syntax colored listings are solved by OPmac tricks 0124 (C syntax), 126 (html syntax) or 0152 (Python syntax). You can simply extend these macros for another language, if you need. Note that referred macros need not any special external processor. All is done in classical TeX.

Answer 2

Knuth has developed the list.tex macros to produce code listings. To produce a listing of the file test.c with the content

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
  printf("Hello World!\n");
}

we input on the terminal

$ pdftex list.tex test.c <<< "\\bye"

and obtain the following output

---

Drawbacks:

• No syntax highlighting
• Overly long lines are not wrapped, but overflow the page
• Tabs are converted to γ (for whatever reason)