[Geany] code folding for .txt files

[Randy Kramer]

On Thursday 12 November 2009 06:16:53 am Hyoung-Ryul Kang wrote:
> I wonder if Geany had an option to make a folding point *according to
> the indentation*. This will enable .txt files to be folded in a very
> sensible way. I also think this would not be technically challenging
> too much, since Geany already detects indentation fairly well.

I'm not as familiar with Geany as with SciTE and Scintilla (which is the 
edit thingie used by Geany)--I know that some of the lexers available 
for Scintilla do fold based on indentation, and I think that Geany uses 
(all?) those same lexers.

I share your desire to fold almost plain text files with the 
extension .txt (I say almost plain text because the ones that I write 
usually have indentation or other syntax clues that would let a lexer 
fold them appropriately, and someday I'd expect to make that work for 
me.  (Someday might be a while, as I have a lexer I want / need to 
write first, and I've been procrastinating lately.)

Anyway, what I might do in your shoes is experiment with the other 
lexers available in Geany (or SciTE)--identify a lexer, find out what 
file types (extensions) it "recognizes", then rename your .txt file to 
use that extension--load it into Geany (or SciTE) and see if the 
folding meets your expectations.  (BTW, the C/C++ lexer--I'll dig out 
the name in a minute--ahh, LexCpp.cxx) does, iirc, in addition to 
folding based on C/C++ syntax, also fold based on indentation, so any 
of the other lexers is worth trying.

If you find a lexer that meets your needs, ask another question on this 
list, ask how to add the extension ".txt" to the list of extensions 
that a particular lexer will "recognize".  I don't think there's any 
real reason such a modification could not be made--I suspect it might 
require a recompilation, and it might be something that you customize 
for yourself as it may be that no one else is interested (I could be 
wrong).  

I intend that my .txt files will be parsed by my LexTWiki.cxx lexer 
(which might be renamed before it is written to LexFoswiki.cxx or 
LexAskRhk..cxx).

BTW, those names are for the lexers in SciTE / Scintilla, I'm not 100% 
sure that they are not renamed or modified (slightly?) for use in 
Geany.  Somewhere in the documentation there must be a list of the 
lexers available for Geany and the extensions they recognize.

Hope this helps!
Randy Kramer

 







>
> Some editors like EditPlus (proprietary, www.editplus.com) have that
> option, and it is great to get a neat folded view, not only of the
> code, but also of the results of a program, which often have an
> arbitrary structure.
>
> Furthermore, you don't even need a syntax file to fold a file of a
> new type, if you only indented it appropriately.
>
> Maybe I should suggest this as a feature request.
>
> HR Kang.