Re: mcedit syntax highlight

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello!

On Tue, 6 Aug 2002, Yuri wrote:

> > Applied with a minor change (magenta changed to brightmagenta).
> > Thank you!
> 
> Occasionally saw this thread and have a question:
> 
> Why don't you guys split syntax highlighting out to the separate
> library with convenient API?

Reasonable question.  The problem is that nobody here can invest enough
time into a major redesign of the editor and syntax highlighting.  Such
change would require a lot of work and time.

When designing a universal library, it should be done right.  It would be
hard to change the API if the library is used by more than one project.  
It would be hard to change syntax for rules once you support hundreds of
languages.

Just splitting the library from MC would not work - there are too many
limitations in it.  I believe that the library should be written from
scratch.

Things would be different if such library existed already and was in a
good shape.  Removing existing syntax engine and linking to the library
would be relatively easy.

Removing code and switching to another API is not hard.  Writing good,
reusable code is hard.  It would be very good to have a separate syntax
highlighting engine, but somebody has to volonteer.

Search for "syntax highligting" on Freshmeat.net doesn't bring anything 
interesting - there are editors with syntax highligting, there is an 
engine in Java, and there are convertors for static text.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin