Re: [FR-devel] Scintilla replacement for Freeride? (was Newbie to FreeRIDE).

[Baptiste Lepilleur]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Euan Mee" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: [FR-devel] Scintilla replacement for Freeride? (was Newbie to
FreeRIDE).


[...]
> > Styling can be done by the container (the ruby part): Scintilla
> > send a styleNeeded event and you are supposed to style the
> > specified text. You can also completly disable styling. I did
> > this for a console output and I colorize the text as I print it!
>
> Another quick question: are the styles Scintilla applies after a
> styleNeeded event configurable?

Style is a single byte of data attached to each character indicating how it
should be styled. You define how a style is displayed separately (you can
specify background color, foregroud, font size, face, bold/italic...).

That byte of data is also shared with the 'indicator'. You can define how
many bits are reserved to style (default a 5, max of 7).

> How straightforward is it then to use Scintilla as a document
> processor, and configure it to recognise a <begin Rubycode>
> and <end Rubycode> pairing, so that we can have an
> automated process which brings together all the program code
> from all the various parts of the system documents in which it
> is written and scattered for testing or production use?  i.e. an
> 'UNTANGLE' function

Scintilla does not do any processing. It dumbly applies the style you
specify. Lexer can be used to apply the style for a given language. Some
lexer are provided but are far from perfect (I'm now convinced that the ruby
lexer should be rewritten: does not support % and /refexp/, and the folding
is based on indentation).

If you are refering to the capability to mix language it seems to be
possible. The HTML lexer of Scintilla colorize VB Script and Java Script.

I'm not sure I understand what you ask. What do you mean by document
processor ?

> How straightforward would it be to use placeholders to refer to
> more detailed refinements of code structures (both in the
> document and between <code> </code> - type markers),
> without affecting our ability to UNTANGLE the program code
> from the system documents?

I really don't get it...

> > The main limitation I run into was the marker symbols: there is
> > little choice (a lot of symbol for folding/tree, but few for
> > other purpose). But It's fairly easy to add other symbols to
> > Scintilla (a few line of C++), with enough diversity, it would
> > not be a problem anymore.
>
> Is this to add to Scintilla's processing of the edited code?  Or
> just to make the marker symbols available to typists using the
> Scintilla GUI?

Ah, there seems to be a confusion about what makers are. Marker are small
symbol on the margin, usually used for break-point of bookmark. Check the
bookmark screen shot on http//gaiacrtn.free.fr/practical-ruby/. Markers are
the blue circle in the margin. The limitation I was refering to was the list
of available symbol (nothing that really look like a 'there is an error on
this line', 'there was an assertion failure on this line', 'an uncaught
exception was thrown from this line', or 'the exception backtrace include
this line'...)

You can attach a symbol to a given line, Scintilla will move it with the
line. Later, you can ask symbol for the current line of a symbol.

[...]
> This sounds good.  My only indecision is whether the
> additional layer of abstraction on top of Scintilla using such
> style markers might be more inconvenient to use when
> developing than 'wiki'- style markup commands.
>
> Then again, maybe there is no conflict between abstracted
> style-markers and a wiki-syntax approach to 'mixed'
> documents - i.e. ones which are text documents ready for
> richly-formatted publication to screen (e.g. WWW, PDF) or
> page, and which also contain all the program code for the
> system under development, in a form which allows automatic
> extraction for use.

We were really not talking about the same thing. Note that scintilla does
not support the inclusion of graphical symbol in the text stream (you can
only display text) => an HTML editor that show the tag around the text (like
Netscape 6 HTML editor, 'show all tags' tab) can not be done using
Scintilla.

Concerning the abstraction layer, I doing some simple work concerning
folding (Scintilla highlevel function are seriously limited in that area).
I'll keep you posted.

Baptiste.
---
Baptiste Lepilleur <address@hidden>
http://gaiacrtn.free.fr/