[Tex/LaTex] minted vs. listings: pros and cons

comparisonlistingsminted

While I'm switching from minted to listings, I would like to ask you
for this comparison.

The following is what it comes to my mind till now:

minted needs Pygments to work, listings does not (this may be a flaw for
beginners but an advantage for expert users)
minted has a verbatim style as default, in listings it has to be set (How can I make lstlisting look exactly like verbatim?)
in listings is very easy to add a new keyword, in minted is not (for
beginners, at least, How to add custom C++ keywords to be recognized by Minted?)
minted, with samepage option, allows to have your code snippets not broken across pages, if you'd like to do the same in listings, you have to use tcolorbox, or other tricks (Avoid page breaks in \lstlistings)
listings allows to use escape chars within a string, minted does not (Minted escapeinside doesn't work within a string).

Eventually, which are the pros and cons of these two packages?

Best Answer

This is really further commentary on samcarter's answer.

minted uses an external library to do the highlighting, listings does everything in TeX. Almost all the pros and cons are attributable to this difference alone.

minted is more fiddly to set up (you need pygments and python to be installed and for tex to find them)
minted needs (at some point in the processing) -shell-escape to allow access to the shell. Note that recent versions do not require shell access in final versions of the document, so you can submit to journals etc a source that does not require -shell-escape but uses the previously generated files from an earlier cached run.
the pygmentize parsing library is far more extensive and expressive than the simple keyword detection in listings so the language specific support is much greater in minted.
pygmentize is used by many other systems and produces output in forms other than Tex (notably HTML/CSS). For example it is used by the trac svn/wiki system and so code can be typeset with minted using the same highlighting rules as used on the other systems.
as most of the real work in minted is in pygmentize (python) it is somewhat less easy to customize just from TeX, but on the other hand if you do customize the pygments lexer for a specific language it is usable in contexts other than TeX.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] minted list of listings and TOC conflict

The common way to add an unnumbered section or chapter heading to the ToC is:

\addcontentsline{toc}{<secunit>}{<heading>}

This would suggest a redefinition like:

\renewcommand{\listoflistings}{%
  \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\listoflistingscaption}%
  \listof{listing}{\listoflistingscaption}%
}

However, since \listof will issue a chapter heading this implicitly also calls \cleardoublepage which means you end up with the wrong page number in the ToC as \addcontentsline is expanded before. Placing it after \listof... also will fail if the list is more than a page long so the correct redefinition should explicitly call \cleardoublepage first itself:

\renewcommand{\listoflistings}{%
  \cleardoublepage
  \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\listoflistingscaption}%
  \listof{listing}{\listoflistingscaption}%
}

[Tex/LaTex] Listings in Minted not working

To put a box, you don't need to wrap minted inside listing. A simple frame=single will do it. But listing wrapper is helpful in putting a caption (putting a \label) and producing a list of listings.

\documentclass[a4paper , 12pt]{article}
\usepackage{minted}
\usemintedstyle{emacs}
\renewcommand\listingscaption{Program}
\renewcommand\listoflistingscaption{List of Java codes}
\begin{document}
\listoflistings
\begin{listing}
\begin{minted}[bgcolor=olive!10]{java}  %% or frame=single
class Test
{
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        System.out.println("Hello World");
    }
}
\end{minted}
\caption{My Java Code}\label{java:sample}
\end{listing}
\end{document}

enter image description here

If you want a frame add frame=single as in

\begin{minted}[bgcolor=olive!10,frame=single]{java}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] minted list of listings and TOC conflict

[Tex/LaTex] Listings in Minted not working

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