Re: syntax highlighting (was utf8, macos x, and fmt)

  • From: Steve Kilbane <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wilyfans@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 22:43:33 +0100

The problem with syntax highlighting - or any formatting - is a
philosophical one. Acme displays the contents of a text file[1].
That's it. The power comes from how the arbitrary contents of
that text file are interpreted, when moused appropriately.
Formatting, such as colour, font, underlining, etc. is
additional information that needs to be stored somewhere.

Last time I looked at the Wily source, mumble years ago, the
different Views offered an approach by which this sort of thing
could be handled. Perhaps Wily could have additional View types
that could render the same text with additional auto-generated
formatting. It drastically complicates the rendering, though,
and that's before you get into the issues caused by such text
being editable, or whether this affects chord behaviour.

(An often-mentioned similar case is being able to render HTML,
or even just recognise URLs in text as mousable)

[1] Okay, acme cheats for directories, in that it creates its own
internal text file contents from a directory, but after that, the
rules are the same.

steve



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