Syntax Highlighting
The most requested feature for Codetch since it’s creation has been, yes, syntax highlighting. And I have wrestled with implementation schemes for years, but nothing ever turned out good enough. It has been clear to me for some time now that my old methods (plain old XUL and JavaScript) were not going to cut it, no matter how clever the code was worked. Enter Scintilla integration.
Sure, exceptional editing features such as code folding, syntax highlighting, auto completion, et al, may be possible with only JS and XUL widgetry, but it wouldn’t be nearly as efficient and probably not as featureful as an integration method. I had known Komodo IDE must have used something of this nature for some time, but what and how?
It wasn’t until I happened upon Codeeditor that the solution was made clear. Isn’t that one sexy XUL application? Seriously, go take a look at the video and come back. I emailed the author, Paul Rouget , about it and sadly it is not an open source project yet, but it is a brilliant demonstration of what Codetch is lacking (and to me, that school has made me complacent with my XUL studies). He pointed me toward OpenKomodo, an open source offspring of Komodo Edit that utilizes SciTE integration like his Codeeditor. Obviously, I have some homework to do…
That said, if anyone has some tips for wrapping plugins in XTF, let me know. Thanks in advance. 
April 12th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Just in case you hadn’t come across this JS wizardry:
http://codepress.org/
I stumbled across it and thought of this blog post… don’t know a thing about programming so I’ve no idea if this would be relevant!
April 12th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Oh, I don’t remember it being real time highlighting when I ran across it before. Thanks Harry! Interesting.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:56 am
I know it’s bit late, but you should take a look at Diavolo by Daniel Glazman (original owner of composer and Nvu).
You can learn more at http://disruptive-innovations.com/zoo/diavolo/diavolo.html