Re: [gedit-list] gedit rocks, [=how to improve the editor even more]

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

On mer, 2007-02-21 at 22:15 +0100, Armin Ronacher wrote:
> Hoi,

Hi Armin,

> Also modelines are possible using a plugin which is very important for 
> me. The bad syntax highlighting for ruby and template engines stays. But 
> after discovering the gtksourceview2 branch (i just saw it from the 
> sourcecode but it looks impressing, uses regular expressions afaik) i 
> had new hope.
> 

Yes the new engine is definately better, however also the old one uses
regexes, part of the problem with poor highlighting of certain languages
is that we do not know them, so patches to improve .lang files are more
than welcome.

> gedit needs themes (including support for theming the "current line"), a
> central plugin database, gtksourceview2 and a ass-kicking webpage.

gsv2 also supports color themes. Current line highlighting is taken from
the gtk theme so it can be somehow customized, but I agree we should
probably turn that into a real style property.

A central plugin database is a cool idea, but something we do not have
enough time to spend on: help is more than welcome. Our current "central
plugin db" is the wiki page... while not advanced as custom db, this has
the really important feature of keeping the entry barrier low for anyone
who wants to add a plugin since we do not have time to track all third
party plugins manually. It worked fairly well until now.

Help with the webpage is always welcome, though bear in mind that we
want to stay consistent with the rest of the gnome web look&feel.
An updated news section or a forum are also something that go well
beyond our current available time since they need constant updating and
moderation.

> Also sourcecode highlighting definition files should be loadable from 
> the ~/.gnome2/gedit/* folder or something like that to allow vim like 
> .vim folders you can copy to your usb stick and move around.

This is already possible: the dir is
~/.gnome2/gtksourceview-1.0/language-specs

> Have a mentioned that having more than one buffer in the same window is 
> cool? If not: it is :D
> 

Yes this is something that would be nice, but it's quite hard to do
properly: the 1 buffer <-> 1 view assumption is pretty hardwired in the
current gedit design of the code.

> Another thing that is a bit different from the suggestions/ideas above 
> is a feature request of a gedit.tool module that provides some functions 
> to indent text using the buffer defined tab rules and other often 
> recurring things. Nearly every python plugin i investigated so far uses 
> it's own indention function. Also newline handling (CR LF etc) should be 
> simplified using such a tool module.
> 

Yes, indentation is something that has been on the table for a while,
but it's far from trivial: feel free to give it a try :)

> Last but not least I want to thank all gedit developers for their work. 
> You did a great job so far. I'm really, really impressed. Keep up the 
> good work.
> 

Thank you!

Ciao
	Paolo