Integrate better text editor

[psifertex]

From @psifertex on May 5, 2015 14:7

Copied from original issue: Vector35/binaryninja#13

[psifertex]

monaco is looking pretty attractive.

[KyleMiles]

Line numbers in "Assemble" window and "Compile C Source" would be good, just to call out one specific feature.

[0xdevalias]

Curious if this is anywhere in mind for the 'nearish' (in a fairly hand wavy way) future? I suspect it would be a pretty big effort to implement it; but I can imagine so many powerful features that could come from being able to use something like monaco as the base for the main code views/etc.

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Edit: Saw on another issue (Ref) that the Binary Ninja UI is implemented in a mix of Qt/C++, it got me wondering if/how easy it would be to integrate monaco with that; which turned up the following on a quick google search (more for curiosity's sake than anything else):

• https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor/discussions/4192

  • C++ Qt Integration

• https://pypi.org/project/monaco-qt/
  • https://github.com/DaelonSuzuka/monaco-qt

  • The monaco text editor deployed as a Qt Widget. Uses QWebEngineView to load a custom web page containing an instance of monaco.

    • https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qwebengineview.html

    • QWebEngineView Class The QWebEngineView class provides a widget that is used to view and edit web documents.

    • https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtwidgets-index.html

    • Qt Widgets

[psifertex]

The QWebEngine solution isn't an option unfortunately as we no longer embed it and it makes the install significantly bigger.

It's not on the immediate roadmap but I would sure like it too as it would improve the snippets plugin a ton.

That said, I suspect we will implement it eventually as we need it for something else in a core feature or if we find an implementation we can easily take advantage of.

[0xdevalias]

@psifertex True true, that makes sense. Another (theoretical) method I found of embedding it was via CEF or similar; but presumably that would also massively add to the install size as well:

• https://github.com/chromiumembedded/cef

  • Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). A simple framework for embedding Chromium-based browsers in other applications.

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I imagine it would take a decent bit of refactoring effort to do so, but I think having monaco (or something equally as powerful) as the main 'Linear' panel view would unlock so many cool UX potentials.