Re: [ jEdit-devel ] Parser generator to use in a jEdit plugin

[Shlomy R. <sre...@gm...>]

> In the meantime, is there is a way to write a mode purely in java,
> without going through the compilation machinery of a mode file, so that
> I might have a look at writing my own special syntax highlighter and
> indentation? I guess I'm wondering what events the syntax highlighter
> has to respond to, and similarly for indentation, and what functions I
> might be able to re-use to simply tell jedit what colour to use for what
> chunks of text...
>
> as I write this, I'm starting to think this might be a lot of work...
>
> any suggestions and comments would be very welcome,
>
> best,
> lucas
>
> --
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>
>

You can start by reading the documentation of edit modes. That's what
a mode file defines, and instead of writing a mode file you can set
the objects at run-time. It's probably not what you want, anyway,
because it's just filling in the mode file properties dynamically in
java.

To apply the mode rules, see the TokenMarker class. It has a method
for marking tokens in a line. This is the starting point, but as you
think, it's an awful lot of work.

... and thanks for mentioning the parser you used. I recall that
looking for a C++ parser, I encountered something named "The Harmonia
project", which is hosted by a university, and as far as I understand
is a self-adjustable parser, that can listen to changes anywhere in
the parsed text and do the minimal things to adapt the parse tree and
associated actions. But I never went into detail to understand how it
works.