[Feature Request] Plain TeX Support

texstudio-org / texstudio

TeXstudio is a fully featured LaTeX editor. Our goal is to make writing LaTeX documents as easy and comfortable as possible.

http://www.texstudio.org/

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[Feature Request] Plain TeX Support #1226

Open JRDetwiler opened 4 years ago

JRDetwiler commented 4 years ago

Environment

TeXstudio: 3.0.0-1
Qt: 5.15.0
OS: Arch Linux
TeX distribution: texlive-core 2020.55416-1

Feature Request

Could you please add support for Plain TeX (that is, namely, tex and pdftex)? I had to learn Plain TeX after LaTeX and I enjoy using TeXstudio, but now I've lost all syntax highlighting and building at the click of a button. I made a user build command tex %.tex | txs:///view but that still leaves the problem of macros looking rather ugly in the editor.

muzimuzhi commented 4 years ago

The syntax highlighting for Plain TeX can be turned on by checking plaintex.cwl in "Configure TeXstudio -> Completion".

JRDetwiler commented 4 years ago

I didn't find this setting earlier, thank you. That does make completion nicer to work with, but I don't think that solves the syntax highlighting issue. For example, many of my loaded fonts still have a red background.

plain TeX syntax highlighting

sunderme commented 4 years ago

the syntax checker understands latex, it does not understand pure tex....

muzimuzhi commented 4 years ago

Support for some tex primitives and/or macros with special syntax need case by case handling, for example see the special treatment for \newif and \newcounter in latexdocument.cpp. Even worse, some tex-nical codes are really hard or even impossible for an editor to statically analysis. For example, tex codes that use \csname ... \endcsname and change category codes.
Fortunately, adding simple support for \font seems as simple as a line \font{cmd}#dS added to tex.cwl, like #693 did for \newXXX macros.

muzimuzhi commented 4 years ago

@JCDetwiler Apart from \font, if you find other not-yet-supported tex primitives or plain tex macros, just post them with examples. And I will find if I can help to add support for (some of) them.

JRDetwiler commented 4 years ago

I understand and thank you for taking an interest in the feature.

I opened up a conference template I recently received from someone who's been using TeX for a few decades now. I see the following in red:

\centerline{text}
\+ for rows in \settabs (and similarly, & gets flagged for tabular command outside tabular env)
\dosupereject
\pagebody
macros from \input epsf (which I believe belongs to my distribution of TeX, since I got it to compile). I have no idea how doable this one is though because I think it probably implies errors for every \input.