[Geany-devel] Changing from scintilla to gtksourceview or scintilla over gtksourceview

[Денис Томилин]

This is not an urgent thought. Just look to the future. I'm just saying that
it makes sense to start changing, because it will end at a time, when the
right version of gtksourceview already be stable. As i think.

>This is not true.
I mean that scintilla isn't part of "gtk" project, isn't close child.

At this moment, i stopped works on "pygeany"(yeah, i gave a name to it), cuz
i want to try to write editor with all concepts, what i need, but on D-lang.
Ofc, i using concepts of geany, but with some modifications and additions
from vim, scribes, emacs, textmate. And, ofc, i using gtksourceview(bad news
- need to write binding for it, but i believe in help of people from russian
popular linux-themed forum linux.org.ru :D).
If it failed, i will resume works on pygeany.
2009/12/28 Enrico Tröger <enrico.troeger at uvena.de>

> On Sat, 26 Dec 2009 14:33:01 +0300, Денис wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> >In last 3 weeks i've in development of new plugin-wrapper of geany
> >plugin-api for python. Main idea - ability to write plugins in python
> >with pygtk and mini-abstract level for geany structures.
>
> Cool!
>
>
> >I've encountered with problem. I need to build bridge and for
> >scintilla, but python have only 3 wrappers: pyscintilla(rip in <2004),
>
> I think writing a Scintilla wrapper in Python isn't necessary or at
> least it is a bit overkill. It should be enough to simply provide the
> scintilla_send_message() function of the Geany plugin API. This
> function is quite generic and can be used to call each Scintilla
> function. The only thing you need to do is to provide the list of the
> message names (SCI_*).
> I agree that a full wrapper API would be nicer and would feel more
> pythonic but still we don't even have this in C (in Geany we have
> sciwrappers.c which wraps a small part of the API, mostly calls we
> need often or where a small part of converting/logic is necessary).
>
>
> >write good and usefull mini-engine. And i trying to google information
> >about this question. I found many mails in lists, where talking about
> >scintilla and gtksource view. Main thing - scintilla is going to be
> >RIP'd, cuz development rate too small and community, who interests in
>
> IMO this is not an argument at all. Scintilla is not dead, it is
> actively not developed and recently it reached version 2.0 which
> supports multiple selection and virtual space (though we don't use it
> yet in Geany but this will happen soon).
>
>
> >this library, very small. Best way - use gtksourceview, becouse it now
> >(in 2.9) have got all necessary functionality and going to be best
> >widget for source editor. As i think, now need to start moving onto
> >gtksourceview as parallel work with 0.19. And at 0.20 fully go to
> >gtksourceview.
>
> It's not that easy.
> Impulsively, I see two main problems:
>
> a) You mention "in 2.9" which is not yet stable or at least very new.
> In Geany, we try to be backwards compatible where it is possible, e.g.
> the minimum requirement for GTK is 2.8 while 2.18 is recent. Using a
> very new GtkSourceView would exclude (and in the long turn
> probably loose) lots of users who can't or don't want to update their
> systems.
>
> b) It's not that easy to simply exchange the editing component. Geany
> and Scintilla are quite linked to each other (well, Geany to
> Scintilla, not the other way round). Changing would mean we would need
> to introduce a new wrapper which abstracts the actual API of the
> editing component from Geany. And then, Scintilla has a different
> concept for syntax highlighting than GtkSourceView which would make it
> even harder, also regarding compatibility of config files.
>
>
> >At the end, gtksourceview is "native" to gtk+, unlike to scintilla.
>
> This is not true.
> Scintilla is "native to GTK". It's just the API which works like
> the Windows message stuff. Anyway, Scintilla provides a native GTK
> widget.
>
>
> My conclusion:
>
> It's not worth changing it especially if the features we need are only
> available in a yet unstable, non-released version of GtkSourceView.
>
> Regards,
> Enrico
>
> --
> Get my GPG key from http://www.uvena.de/pub.asc
>
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