Highlighting

eric_stlouis · Post by **eric_stlouis** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 2:46 pm

Hello, everyone. I'm new to the forums and I just have a quick question. I tried a search, but didn't find much.

I'm using Textpad version 4.5.0 and would like to highlight text on a page. It seems really simple, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure it out.

I've developed some programming templates and want to highlight parts of the code where the programmers need to change things.

I don't want to add anything to the .syn file, I just want to change the background color of some text and save it into a book.

Can anyone help? Thanks!

talleyrand · Post by **talleyrand** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 6:49 pm

I don't believe it's possible. The colouring in the file is a function of the syntax file. The file that is saved is exactly what you see on screen, no mark up, no indication of where you were last in the file, nothin' but text. I think you'll need to basically make comments in your template into something easily recognizable by your developers.

Post by **bbadmin** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 7:03 pm

As has already been observed, you can't save formatting information in a plain text file, as there's nowhere to hide it. That's why word processing formats, such as RTF and DOC are necessary. However, you could convert your code to HTML, by selecting all, using Edit/Copy Other/As a HTML Page, then pasting into a new document and saving it as a HTML file. Once you've done that, you can modify the HTML to change the format of the parts you want to highlight (e.g by surrounding them with <em>...</em>), but you won't be able to compile it!

Keith MacDonald
Helios Software Solutions

jeffy · Post by **jeffy** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 7:12 pm

Don't know how exactly to do it, but it'd be funky to save a workspace of files along with a TWS file. Although it's not quite what you want, you could have bookmarks in the files you want to change, and maybe a README in it as well. The README document could be the first document to open.

It'd be even funkier if you could have a Search Results that you could set up and *they* could click on.

Just dreaming here. Don't mind me. :' )

eric_stlouis · Post by **eric_stlouis** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 7:14 pm

Thanks for the replies.

I was thinking maybe I could just use a second comment character - something like "`" - and then edit the .syn file to highlight it.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble with THAT too. I guess it just isn't my day today.

What line in the .syn file corresponds to the "Comments 2" setting in the HTML document class? I was thinking it would be "CommentStartAlt" and "CommentEndAlt", but those aren't working.

Any ideas?