[Geany-devel] SCSS (Sassy CSS) lexer support

[Ross McKay]

Lex Trotman wrote:

>Geany prefers to use an unmodified Scintilla from that project.
>Upgrading Scintilla is not a minor task involving as it does checking
>and verification that all Geany settings in all filetypes map
>correctly to all Scintilla styles and that all changes have been
>handled correctly. Therefore Geany does not update Scintilla very
>often, rather when there are significant fixes in Scintilla and/or
>significant new features.

I've already done the work required, my fork of Geany has SCSS working
with the version of Scintilla currently used by Geany. The lexer is the
CSS lexer, to which I've added some code for SCSS support. I've added
the necessary filetype data and hacked the CSS tag parser minimally.
SWMBO is already using this in anger :)

If you look at the fork on github[1] you'll see that it's ready to go
right now. I could create a pull request and it'd be ready to merge.

>The decision to support new languages is also difficult due to the
>increase each language brings to the ongoing workload each upgrade.
>
>Although this suggestion has not been run past the Geany developers, I
>suggest that you would increase the chances of a new language being
>added if you offered to be the language maintainer and support person.
> That is you offer to create and maintain the mapping code and data
>for the language each time Scintilla is upgraded, and of course offers
>of help with other languages can't hurt, the Geany devs can't be
>experts in all languages.

No worries, I'm not finished with it anyway. I plan to increase support
for SCSS in the lexer, and also add support for Less CSS[2] which is
similar but different. There's already some code out there for both SCSS
and Less which the Komodo team have put together[3] so I know all of
this is possible. And I'd like to refactor the lexer somewhat, so that
it's more manageable and can more easily be maintained. But all that's
for another day, after I get some paid work done.

[1] https://github.com/webaware/geany
[2] http://lesscss.org/
[3] http://preview.tinyurl.com/8y7fvrv
-- 
Ross McKay, Toronto, NSW Australia
"Tuesday is Soylent Green day"