[Geany-Devel] [FT-plugins] Proposed "Features"

[Matthew Brush]

On 2016-08-30 06:43 AM, Colomban Wendling wrote:
> Le 29/08/2016 à 05:14, Matthew Brush a écrit :
>> […]
>>
>> Syntax Highlighting
>> -------------------
>>
>> Most likely using an API based on/similar to Scintilla's "container
>> lexers".
>>
>> At the minimum, it could have a callback something like:
>>
>>     gboolean (*highlight)(GeanyPlugin*, GeanyDocument*,
>>         guint start_pos, guint end_pos, gpointer user_data);
>>
>> As with Scintilla's "container lexer", it would just tell the provider
>> what and where to highlight. It might be pointless providing `end_pos`
>> it could probably just highlight a whole line at time (maybe like
>> Scintilla's 'style-needed' notification).
>
> I'm really not sure it's a good idea to go the custom callback way.
> IMO, we should first try and see how easy it'd be with plugins providing
> their own full-blown Scintilla lexer library that we just add and use.
>

The only positive I really see, which in practice probably won't exist, 
is modularity and ability to re-use lexers independent of 
Geany/ft-plugin (ie. for all Scintilla-using apps). I say in practice 
because at least with my `LexClang.so` I needed it to be bound into 
Geany anyway to get hooks for when to re-parse (you can't re-parse a 
million token C++ file each time Scintilla wants to re-colour a line of 
code). Further, the dynamic lexer needs to cooperate with 
Geany/ft-plugin, or at least deviate from normal Scintilla lexers, if it 
wanted to provide/setup its own lexical states/styles (TBD how this part 
will go).

> Having our own callback means one more indirection, and changing the
> SciLexer to CONTAINER anyway, so I don't see much advantage just now.
>

With the `LexClang.so` dynamic lexer I made, dynamic lexers seemed not 
to fit well (too isolated, too many assumptions that it's a simple dumb 
lexer and not a semantic-based on, etc) . All I really wanted was a way 
to disable Scintilla's lexer (ie. switch it to `SCLEX_CONTAINER`) 
without changing the filetype in Geany, and without doing it behind 
Geany's back from the plugin.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush