Expose language display names to extension API

[Nicd]

• VSCode Version: 1.8.1
• OS Version: Irrelevant

Currently it seems it is not possible to get the name of the language of a document in an extension. The document object contains a property languageId which has an internal ID for the language. vscode.languages.getLanguages() can also be used to get all registered language IDs. There is no method to get the actual names of the languages.

The editor displays the name of the language in the status bar and in the language mode menu, but the names are not exposed to extensions. Personally I am working on an extension for my web service which requires the actual language names and not the IDs.

[Nicd]

The extension https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=juha-ristolainen.code-stats-vscode requires this feature to be implemented for proper functionality. Without it, it can only work with a hardcoded mapping of language IDs to language names, which will obviously fail when new programming languages and other syntaxes are created.

[wraith13]

Is this problem still unsolved?
I am also having trouble with this problem now.

[wraith13]

Here is the code I wrote for someone who is having the same problem.
This code seems to be generally fine, but I can't get the localized plaintext name.

const getLanguageName = (languageId: string) => vscode.extensions.all
    .map(i => <any[]>(i.packageJSON as any)?.contributes?.languages)
    .filter(i => i)
    .reduce((a, b) => a.concat(b), [])
    .filter(i => i.id === languageId && 0 < (i.aliases?.length ?? 0))
    .map(i => i?.aliases?.[0])?.[0] ?? languageId;

[worksofliam]

Came here to say this would be a nice to have.

[jrieken]

/duplicate of #2871