Re: jed highlighting: multiple multiline comments

[Josh Guilfoyle <jasta@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 08:56:52AM +0300, Tuomas Salo wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I don't seem to be the only one asking for a possibility to define 
> highlighting for multiple styles of multiline comments. Of course, I 
> would prefer a regexp-based solution (DFA supporting multiline).
> 
> Any ideas on whether this feature could be expected in the near future?

I'm sensing that John isn't likely to get to this anytime in the reasonably
near future, so your best bet is really to propose something that he will
agree to accept in patch form and work on it yourself.  What's unfortunate is
that this kind of change is really something drastic that JED has been needing
for a very long time, but it seems most people are only willing to make minor
hacks.  Perhaps you've got more ambition/time/patience than the rest of us to
try?

Keep in mind that I think it's a good idea to formalize your plan of attack
and post here for review before beginning work.  This may also give you some
idea as to whether or not your patch will be accepted upstream.

> 
> There is a (kludgy?) patch for this (see 
> http://www.ruptured-duck.com/jed-users/msg00022.html) but is it too kludgy?

The method that I (and presumably the follow-up poster) was talking about is
really just a shameful hack that perpetuates the "old" crippled syntax
highlighting method.  I don't recommend going that route...

Another more drastic approach may be to convert syntax highlighting rules into
something more lexical and complete as VIM has done.  That is, syntax
highlighting would be more like training a generic grammatical parser than
writing simple per-line regular expressions.  This method is amazingly
powerful, but extremely complicated to implement and develop new modes.
Personally I think it is worth it if you are capable of designing the code in
a clean and maintainable way.  Anyone else agree?

-- 
Josh Guilfoyle
http://jasta.gotlinux.org/

--------------------------
To unsubscribe send email to <jed-users-request@xxxxxxxxxxx> with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body.
Need help? Email <jed-users-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx>.