[Bf-committers] Syntax Highlighting & Alternate Languages

[Benjamin Tolputt]

On 27/07/2011 10:50 PM, Campbell Barton wrote:
> +1 for using an existing text engine - at least seriously
> investigating the possibility before extending blenders,

I'll be flat out honest with you, I can easily do what is needed to
simply extend Blender's current highlighting. I do not have the time
available to alter Blender in a fundamental manner such as is being
suggested with regex parsers, user-defined syntaxes, and alternate
foundation for the text window. If someone else wants to take it on (and
it doesn't wind up another "Duke Nukem Forever" feature); I am more than
happy to let others get it done.

My sole purpose in suggesting this was to get buy-in from the core
developers. My time is limited enough as it is and adding the
integration of some user-configurable mechanism with or without new
libraries is beyond the effort I can dedicate. If the change being
approved requires it to be a fundamental overhaul - I cannot do it, and
therefore I have my answer. If a minor change is acceptable, I can get
that done relatively easily myself.

> scintilla is pretty powerful, we may not even need something so
> advanced (code folding for eg), but its the only one I know of thats
> been ported to different systems like this.

I'll be honest, I love using Scite on Windows (on OSX, the requirement
on X11 makes it too painful to use, like GIMP). I don't have anywhere
near the development time to integrate the library & have it load syntax
definitions, let alone test it on all the platforms. I'm not saying it
wouldn't be great to have that, I am simply saying that if that is what
is needed for this feature - you are going to need someone else to get
it done.

-- 
Regards,

Benjamin Tolputt