Kate is a great editor. It has an extensible syntax highlighting facility built around XML files.

As ePerl is very similar to PHP in essence, I took the existing PHP highlighting scheme and adapted it to ePerl. I also had to modify the Perl syntax file to catch the :> and !> terminations. And that's it!

Installation

Copy the two following files in your ~/.kde/share/apps/katepart/syntax/ directory:

• perl-eperl.xml
• html-eperl.xml

Restart Kate. All your .epl, .eperl, .phtml and .phtm files should be highlighted. If not, open the Tools menu, and select Syntax highlighting, Script, ePerl (HTML).

Tested in Kate 3.3.2 (KDE 4.3.2 / Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala).

Known bugs

• You can mix <? with :> (for example) and all the other invalid combinations will be undetected. In fact, there should be separate highlighting for CGI and normal modes, but there is not. This should not be a big issue, though.