Additional attributes for syntax highlighting

Ideas for new features

Moderators: AmigoJack, bbadmin, helios, Bob Hansen, MudGuard

How important is this feature for future versions of TextPad?

Important, even if the size/efficiency of TextPad increases/degrades
55
54%
Somewhat important
29
28%
I'm okay either way
12
12%
Somewhat unimportant
4
4%
Unimportant, even if the size/efficiency of TextPad remains unaffected
2
2%
 
Total votes: 102

User avatar
skaemper
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2003 1:07 pm
Location: (Northern) Germany
Contact:

Additional attributes for syntax highlighting

Post by skaemper »

I'd (still) like to see additional attributes added to the possibilities of syntax higlighting, especially bold, italics and underline. :roll:

Stephan
"It's POLYMORPHIC!"
A former colleague
CJ
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2003 10:37 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Additional syntax highlighting attributes.

Post by CJ »

    Excellent suggestion!

    I've seen this feature in other text editors, like Context (http://fixedsys.com/context/).
    I'd love to italicize comment lines and make other keywords bold.
    Ceranith
    Posts: 7
    Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 6:31 am

    Re: Additional attributes for syntax highlighting

    Post by Ceranith »

    skaemper wrote:I'd (still) like to see additional attributes added to the possibilities of syntax higlighting, especially bold, italics and underline. :roll:

    Stephan
    Yes, agreed :?
    User avatar
    trids
    Posts: 69
    Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 10:16 am
    Location: South Africa

    Post by trids »

    And strikethrough would be great too, please!
    pilgrimpete
    Posts: 1
    Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2003 9:15 pm

    Syntax Highlighting

    Post by pilgrimpete »

    I have also requested the ability to include spaces in the SingleComment field e.g. >SingleComment = " . "
    Rational: Some JCL/ECL treat anything on a line after a space period space sequence as a comment.
    User avatar
    maniac
    Posts: 33
    Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2003 4:16 am
    Contact:

    Re: Additional attributes for syntax highlighting

    Post by maniac »

    skaemper wrote:I'd (still) like to see additional attributes added to the possibilities of syntax higlighting, especially bold, italics and underline. :roll:

    Stephan
    and make sure they are implemented...correctly...;)
    DeadAgain
    Posts: 7
    Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2003 6:31 am

    Yes, this would definitely be a plus....

    Post by DeadAgain »

    There are too few really distinct colors to handle my needs... I haven't found a background color that I like for any of the Keyword sets, and an addition like this would be welcome.... but my favorite font is Terminal 8, so can any of the above mentioned attributes be used with that?

    D
    knhighto
    Posts: 1
    Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:14 pm

    Post by knhighto »

    "Rich" syntax highlighting is also particularly helpful when printing out code on a black and white printer.
    kjr
    Posts: 1
    Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2004 3:20 pm

    yet another request

    Post by kjr »

    I'm using TextPad for all my ASCII editing work, except PHP coding, just because TextPad can't highlight syntax in bold. That's why I need this feature very much. I hope that this will be included in version 4.x (=free upgrade for me).
    ChipJust
    Posts: 3
    Joined: Thu Jan 08, 2004 6:06 pm
    Location: Austin, TX

    Lable Recognition

    Post by ChipJust »

    It would be nice if I could define a simple expression to recognise a part of grammer...for example, in assembly you have lables that always end with a : (or :: for global). I can't figure out how to get the syntax to recognise this sort of thing. A similar case is MSDOS-Batch files. Lables are always preceeded by a :. So if there was something like

    lable = ^[^ ]+:
    for assembly

    or

    lable = ^[ ]+:.+
    for DOS

    In fact if we could use regular expressions to define our own grammer that would be great. I could use one to define mulitline comments for example...because in assembly you can say "COMMENT x" where x can be any character and the comment extend to its next occurance. This is simple to provide a regular expression for, but tedious to define each time you find some code that uses a new x character.

    So it would be nice if anytime we added a keyword to the header of the syntax file it became a new color configurable item in the sytax highlight list. This is a larger shift, though...

    -chip
    bobtarling
    Posts: 9
    Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2004 5:09 pm
    Location: UK

    Post by bobtarling »

    I don't want to cross-post the detail so here's a link to a related comment I've added to another thread - http://www.textpad.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 5835#15835
    User avatar
    gracefool
    Posts: 76
    Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2004 7:21 am
    Location: Wellington, New Zealand
    Contact:

    Post by gracefool »

    Would be really neat and easy to implement.
    Stephen Black

    background coloring

    Post by Stephen Black »

    Another thing (I haven't found this mentioned yet) I'd like is to have the background color extend to the right edge of the window in the absence of syntax that resets it. My personal use for this is in coloring comments. I like to use the background color to provide a very clear distinction between text and code, especially for block comments that begin files and functions. However, this isn't very effective when the right edge of the comment looks ragged. If the background color extended to the right edge of the window or page as long as the comment had not been terminated by a non-newline character then this provides very bold delineation between major blocks of code.

    --Steve
    nnjones
    Posts: 2
    Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2004 3:16 pm

    Syntax Files Merge Capability

    Post by nnjones »

    I want to be able to merge syntax definition files. :)
    VoxEcho
    Posts: 36
    Joined: Fri Sep 26, 2003 4:48 pm
    Location: Oz

    Post by VoxEcho »

    i know this thread went dead a while ago, but i thought i would add a thought

    what about being able to define "help hints" to a syntax file for information about the item to be highlighted... for example

    [keywords 1] /* php syntax file */
    echo {echo( string arg1 [, string argn...]) [Output one or more strings]}
    md5 {md5(string str) [Calculate the md5 hash of a string]}

    so when user hovers their mouse over the highlighted word in their code the helphint text will show what is added within the {}'s in the syntax file.

    -Echo
    Why yes, I do program in Comic Sans
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