[ jEdit-devel ] jEdit for C: just thoughts

[Sergey V. U. <ser...@cl...>]

Hi all

These days I tried to use jEdit for C development - and I was really
disappointed how low is the support for this language comparing to Java:

1. No support for make process. We do have very sophisticated AntFarm
but no support for Makefile. I realize that parsing generic Makefile is
not easy thing to do - but I think antlr can do it. As a very
minimalistic approach, little Console-based Session-aware plugin (or
macros?) would do the job. This plugin should have "project directory"
option (or just take it from session?) and allow user to enter the
target manually. Not difficult to code but better than nothing.
Currently users have to do "cd projdir; make all" in Console. 75% of
these words can be automated. 
So, anyone wishing to contribute to jEdit (or start its own little nifty
plugin:) - welcome.
The ultimate solutions would be to make AntFarm independant on the type
of makefiles (with plugins for make, jmk, ant, ...)

2. Autoformatting. I currently use JavaStyle. It is really neat thing. I
cannot imagine anything better (thanks to Dirk and Chris). But why it
supports Java only? The syntax of C (C++) is not very different. Will it
be possible to make pluggable architecture of this plugin (or jrefactory
library)? I realize this can be really difficult thing to do but isn't
it worth efforts? Other languages (Perl, PHP, python for example) could
benefit of it too.

3. Context help. Dirk, what about the idea of showing unix man pages in
InfoViewer? Is it difficult thing to do? Proparly, support for man pages
in JIndex would be helpful here.

My ideas are very unformed, expensive (in terms of effort) and probably
useless. I just think the idea "jEdit for Java developers only" is not
very correct. 

Regards,

Sergey