This is a spin out of hexojs/hexo-util#19 (comment).

The idea is to support different libraries other than the current highlight.js, e.g.

• atom's highlights
• prism

A major benefit is that theme dev can use/adapt from much more css. Some library may also be faster than another. hexojs/hexo-util#39 can be addressed by atom and prism.

Currently, highlight.js is tightly integrated into hexo, so adding another library is expected not to be straightforward. One possible issue is configuration, which I think should be tackled first.

So, to change library, user can specify engine (I will refer both library and engine interchangeably for the rest of the comment),

highlight:
  engine: hljs|atom|prism

No problem, but here comes the tricky part, configuring each of them. While each engine may share similar options, I think ideally they should be separated, like so:

highlight:
  engine: ...
  hljs:
    gutter: true
  prism: ...

highlight.hljs is preferred over highlight.highlight for clarity. But currently the option is used to address hexojs/hexo-util#19 (comment) using

highlight:
  hljs: true

Retaining compatibility is possible (like #3675), i.e. can check highlight.hljs is a boolean or not. If boolean, parse it as highlight.hljs.classPrefix.

highlight:
  hljs:
    classPrefix: ''|'hljs-'

Likewise, the approach could also apply to retain compatibility with the current options:

highlight:
  auto_detect:
  line_number:
  tab_replace:

However, I suggest not to retain old options forever, they can be dropped in hexo@5 for instance, and permanently move to under highlight.hljs.

A side benefit of having hljs-specific option is that users familiar with the engine can use its option naming instead; hexo rename some option which confuse those users. See hexojs/hexo-util#40.

Previous suggestion #1300