To sum up, a colorizer is just an object with a method to colorize a line, given an array of chars and an initial state.
The implementation is just a finite state automaton: an action is performed depending on the current state and the current char. The action is usually a combination of:
- advance to next char
- colorize the previous range of chars
- switch to a different state.
This model makes impossible to colorize some features of the perl language such as
multiline strings using '<<XYZ'.
If you want to implement a new colorizer, I could send you a detailed list of steps. It should not be too difficult by starting with copying a similar colorizer. The most difficult part is to define manually states and actions (this should normally be done by a regex compiler).
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I just implemented a perl coloriser, it is still very alpha.
The color is not always right around the edges and the color shifts as you move the cursor up and down as can be seen from the screenshot.
Coloring things line by line does make heredocs and strings harder, but they are implemeted. Also it reduces the effectiveness of regex's.
How are the colorizers suppose to work ?
I am trying to write a colorizer for perl, but the zinc
sources doesn't make much sense to me.
To sum up, a colorizer is just an object with a method to colorize a line, given an array of chars and an initial state.
The implementation is just a finite state automaton: an action is performed depending on the current state and the current char. The action is usually a combination of:
- advance to next char
- colorize the previous range of chars
- switch to a different state.
This model makes impossible to colorize some features of the perl language such as
multiline strings using '<<XYZ'.
If you want to implement a new colorizer, I could send you a detailed list of steps. It should not be too difficult by starting with copying a similar colorizer. The most difficult part is to define manually states and actions (this should normally be done by a regex compiler).
I just implemented a perl coloriser, it is still very alpha.
The color is not always right around the edges and the color shifts as you move the cursor up and down as can be seen from the screenshot.
Coloring things line by line does make heredocs and strings harder, but they are implemeted. Also it reduces the effectiveness of regex's.
Screenshot at:
http://ng.freezope.org/code-browser-perl-hilite.png
I'll sent you a diff when it gets more mature.