Custom Color Syntax Highlighting

[eparker28]

It would be nice to have the ability to color-code strings in code (like in Visual Studio). Any plans for such a feature?

[retailcoder]

We do have plans to eventually replace the VBE's code panes with our own, so as to support many of the more advanced features that we want to implement - including custom syntax highlighting. Is that what you meant, or "color-code strings" was for something else? Thanks!

[eparker28]

That’s exactly what I meant. Thanks!

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 12, 2018, at 10:30 AM, Mathieu Guindon notifications@github.com<mailto:notifications@github.com> wrote:

We do have plans to eventually replace the VBE's code panes with our own, so as to support many of the more advanced features that we want to implement - including custom syntax highlighting. Is that what you meant, or "color-code strings" was for something else? Thanks!

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[sharpcoder7]

@retailcoder Hi Mathieu, I am very interested in replacement of existing editor. Is there some reading for that? Any links, documentation etc

[retailcoder]

@sharpcoder7 have you looked into twinBASIC? It's still in early stages, but progressing quickly and roadmapped to somehow integrate with VBA. It's an add-in for the VS Code editor, so you get all the perks of a current-day, lightweight IDE, with 100% backward compatibility with VBA/VB6. If I misunderstood your question and you actually meant to ask about how we'd go about implementing our own custom code panes in Rubberduck, we're pretty much in uncharted territory but the idea is to have a single dockable toolwindow that would house WPF/XAML controls like a tear-tab UI with much better docking management than the VBE's; we want an actual status bar, and then the actual editor panes can behave exactly how we code them (block folding, document line numbers, block completion, etc.), and then we can host our current dockable UI (already WPF/XAML) inside that custom editor pane, and only deal with a single COM UI element (other than the menu items). The tech is all there, we just need to learn to use it and make it happen - reading materials include whatever it takes to get AvalonEdit to bend to our collective will, mostly! 🤓

[sharpcoder7]

@retailcoder got it, I thought that microsoft have some sort of api for "enhancing" standard editor. I've seen some extensions which adds a lot of useful features like extra syntax highlighting etc, so I thought that they somehow modified the existing editor, but it looks like they just implemented custom windows like you want to. About twinBasic, yes I know that, it looks promising but it is not open source :) I prefer open products. Rubberduck itself is great project but it does not work well with our huge Access application (500 forms, 200 modules, 250 reports O_o). I`ve checked the source code and it should be changed a lot to support such monster applications :( Anyway I just thinking how to improve our development performance and looking for a way to do that :)