HTML: add syntax-highlight to textarea

Problem
You have an HTML form with a textarea where you want to accept some source code. You want to turn this simple textarea into a fancy input area that adds syntax highlighting.

Solution
I tried EditArea, and it suits my needs. See this SO page for more alternatives.

EditArea

“EditArea is a free javascript editor for source code. This editor is designed to edit souce code files in a textarea. The main goal is to allow text formatting, search and replace and real-time syntax highlight (for not too heavy text).” (source)

• demo
• installation
• configuration

For Python support, I had to add these lines to the HTML source:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="../editarea/edit_area/edit_area_full.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
editAreaLoader.init({
    id : "src_input"       // textarea id
    ,syntax: "css"          // syntax to be uses for highgliting
    ,start_highlight: true      // to display with highlight mode on start-up
    ,syntax: "python"
    ,replace_tab_by_spaces: 4
});
</script>

Related work

• Ace (it seems a more professional solution)