ScintillaNET: Trolling for Features

GarrettS — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:45:00 GMT

I've got several people interested in contributing to ScintillaNET, now what we need to do is build a roadmap.

I need to know what kinds of things that we should be putting into this next version, (including things in older versions, or stuff you may have coded yourself).

I'm only a couple days away from having the basic API fully implemented; this will allow us to start adding in the feature of Scite that we all enjoy, (smart indenting, common find/replace etc...) and have it useable everywhere.

I'd also like a list of places and projects that you think could benefit from ScintillaNET.

Finally, I've got a rather ingenious idea for a little utility that i'm calling "Scintilla Everywhere", and I'd like to hear people's ideas for helping me implement it:

ScintillaEverywhere

I want to build a tool that given a hot key will pop up a ScintillaNET editor on top of *any* edit control in Windows. Using standard messaging, you should be able to edit the contents of the field (in the ScintillaNET shadow) and have it sync the contents back to the actual edit field. This would have the perceived effect of having ScintillaNET availible in any application that used a text field. Imagine, any text field that you can edit, would suddenly have the power and flexibility of Scintilla in it. Color Syntax highlighting, outlining, etc...

I've got some ideas on how I'd start that, but I'd love to hear what others know, or if there is a better way to do that.

Anyway, PLEASE file issues for feature requests, and we'll discuss them in the boards and issues on CodePlex.

ScintillaNET : A color-syntax-higlighting editor component for .NET

GarrettS — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 05:41:00 GMT

I think I'll take a moment to plug a little peice of software that I'd built in the past, that I'm reviving and shoring up.

ScintillaNET is a .NET binding for a fantastic little color-syntax-highlighting editor component called Scintilla.

Scintilla is a free source code editing component. It comes with complete source code and a license that permits use in any free project or commercial product.

As well as features found in standard text editing components, Scintilla includes features especially useful when editing and debugging source code. These include support for syntax styling, error indicators, code completion and call tips. The selection margin can contain markers like those used in debuggers to indicate breakpoints and the current line. Styling choices are more open than with many editors, allowing the use of proportional fonts, bold and italics, multiple foreground and background colours and multiple fonts.

I wrote 5 different .NET bindings over the years, stretching from C# to Managed C++ and back to C#. This will be rebuild number 6.

This time, I'm using CodeDom to emit the bindings from the definition file that the Scintilla project uses to do it's own coding, and FXCop to make sure it's interface is clean and correct. I've also gotten some fantastic input from Chris Rickard, and work that he's done has been invaluable.

I'm also going to re-engineer the configuration system that I built, which was quite huge, and a little daunting. I have a proof-of-concept version that I built which has support for 60 or so languages, and distills the schemes down to a very small surface area. Depending on what I want out of it, I may rebuild that too.

Anyway, if you want to check it out, I've got an alpha build on CodePlex : (http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=ScintillaNET) and I'd welcome people to log issues at the site, and if you're willing to contribute, I'd love the help.

Probably in a week or so, I should have the core functionality finished, and can start assigning tasks.

g	Garrett Serack \| Program Manager \|Federated Identity Team \| Microsoft Corporation blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/garretts

Garrett Serack: Open Source Development at Microsoft : ScintillaNET

ScintillaNET: Trolling for Features

ScintillaNET : A color-syntax-higlighting editor component for .NET