Re: [gedit-list] Syntax Highlighting

[Andreas Tepe <andreas tepe physics gatech edu>]

Hello John,

in this case, there has been a change in the politics. I remember to have had a gedit version with
the capability of setting the syntax highlighting. It was then removed.

I looked through different forums and found the described politics as a reason for that (which may
of cause be not really true). In the gnome-screensaver (which I gave as an example for this
politics) FAQ I found this:

> Why doesn't the screensaver preferences tool allow me to change the settings for the theme?
>
> We are trying to take a different approach. A gnome-screensaver theme is not directly equivalent
> to the xscreensaver concept of a "hack". Each gnome-screensaver theme is a combination of a
> "hack" (or theme engine) and a set of options. This is quite a different design. So, perhaps, a
> better question is how does one create a new theme for a pre-existing theme engine? For that
> please see the related section in this FAQ.

They explain the reasons (which are all minor compared to the introduced difficulties) below that.

If I misunderstood the reasons for removing the syntax highlighting GUI and/or mixed them up with 
the gnome-screensaver arguments, I'm sorry for that.

Regarding the fixing of the GTK+ problem:
Unfortunately, this fix has not been available in Debian Squeeze. I hope they will update the 
corresponding packages, soon. But thanks for mentioning this!

Cheers,
Andreas




Jesse van den Kieboom schrieb:
> Andreas Tepe wrote:
> > Hello John,
> >
> > yes, the problem is known and probably not a gedit problem.
> >
> > I got this answer about it:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > this is a problem in gtk itself, so until it gets fixed there we can't make anything about
> > > that.
> > >
> > > Regards.
> I think this was recently fixed in gtk+ though.
> > There are also some other issues, like the impossibility of defining the syntax highlighting
> > colors in a GUI (like it was possible in former times), but this is because of some very stupid
> > gnome politics not allowing the users to change anything anymore unless they are not willing to
> > mess around with style files.
> >
> > The argumentation behind is that any user could create a nice style file and shares it with the
> > world. This is as far from reality as it can be...
> This is not the argumentation actually. We want to provide an interface for this, but it's not a
> trivial interface to design (in particular due to the flexibility of the new format over the old
> format) and we decided to put priorities elsewhere for now.
>
> Please try to keep to constructive arguments, rather than throwing around statements such as
> 'very stupid gnome politics'.
> > You would be surprised (if you don't know yet already) how many nice settings screen savers
> > have when using xscreensaver instead of the gnome-screensaver. (But you would also be surprised
> > how difficult the gnome people it made to deactivate the gnome-screensaver...)
> >
> > Cheers, Andreas
> >
> >
> > John Pye schrieb:
> > > This bug has bothered me too, but I never worked out exactly what was happening. Is this a
> > > known and reported problem already?
> > >
> > > Bug is still present on Ubuntu 9.10.
> > >
> > > Cheers JP
> > >
> > > Andreas Tepe wrote:
> > > > I really like gedit (except the bug that copying with the middle mouse button click causes
> > > > a jump to the original text)

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