I noticed if you try to put a space in a syntax name in the config file you get an error (in a debug build at least):
example:
syntax "Apache Config" "\.conf$"
stderr:
Error in /Users/mscalora/.nanorc on line 6: A syntax name must be quoted
The cause appears to be the parse_next_word() function stops at the first space/isblank() or null char. and then parse_syntax() fails to find the closing quote.
It is not clear is the prohibition is intentional or not but I can't think of a good reason to quote the name if spaces are not permitted. In any case the error is a bit misleading since the name is quoted. It does appear that the second argument, a regexp can contain a space.
-Mike