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It would be helpful to have a quick and easy language selector to specify the primary programming language used in a post.

In theory, this should be unnecessary, because Stack Exchange has a wonderful tagging system, and often, languages can be inferred from the tags. I find that in reality, however, most of the questions I write are language agnostic in principle, yet do contain code snippets. Unfortunately, the tags can't indicate what that language is.

I write questions just infrequently enough that I can never remember the syntax. So I click the little help icon, click on "advanced help", Ctrl+F for "syntax", copy and paste something close, and then edit to suit.

It would be great if the process was much quicker and easier. Besides saving time, I think it would encourage more posts to have syntax highlighting displayed correctly, making for a more readable site in general.

A workflow consideration is that you don't want users to manually set syntax highlighting until after tagging. One way to do this would be to put a primary language selection control next to the tagging control. It would show the tag-inferred primary language, if there one. In any case, it would allow specifying/overriding the primary language.

Specifying a primary language would add a language-all directive at the end of a post, similar to how links are placed automatically at the end. The rules for interpreting language-all comments would be tweaked so that placement at the end of the post has equivalent semantics as at the beginning. It seems likely that such a tweak would not cause any significant compatibility issues.

Example of what a post would look like after the user selects a language using the UI control I'm requesting:

I was trying to compare how many gumballs it takes to [clog][1] my processor's pipeline
compared with my web server's pipeline. It seems that Apache mucks up quicker with
sugar-free and AMD chokes on excessive gluten...

    class Cluggaclugga { public int IsSlimy; }

[1]: http://stuck.io
<!-- language-all: c# -->
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    +1 for "AMD chokes on excessive gluten". I agree with what the post requests tho ;) Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 10:26
  • Well color me surprised (no pun). I didn't realize that <!-- language: lang-foo --> got cleared by intervening text. Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:13
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    Alternately: Just a toolbar control that makes inserting <!-- language: xxx --> tags easier by popping up a dialog with common choices and a text area where you can type in your own if needed. Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:14
  • @T.J.Crowder My concern with a toolbar control is that in cases where language can be inferred from tags, users will see it too early in the workflow. It won't be obvious whether you need to specify a language until the question is tagged. Answers are another story, however, since the tags are already set before you begin an answer. Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:24
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    Fenced! Code! Blocks! Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:26
  • @EdwardBrey: Fair point. I've often wondered if the tags were in the wrong place, but odds of getting them moved now are low. (I actually think the whole question asking process needs to be more guided, but every attempt to do so has been shot down with a rain of fire from on high...) Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:26
  • @Ryan: You mean like three backticks followed by a language ID, and then ending with three backticks on a line of their own? Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:27
  • @T.J.Crowder: Yes. Solves a few indentation annoyances, too. Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:29
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    @Ryan: Yeah. There's the cost of readability of the unrendered markdown, but the cost is fairly low, and on SO, you're not looking at unrendered markdown unless you're writing/editing it... Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 19:33

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