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Code editor update

Started by Paul Squires, December 21, 2017, 06:56:43 PM

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Paul Squires

Just a quick update to let you know that I am now coding split windowing so we can have up to 4 synced editing windows for each open document.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

I decided to go with dual pane split windows rather than 4 way splitters. See the attached animated gif.
Now back to the visual designer.....
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

I have been working a lot on the code editor's parser. I wanted to autocomplete and codetips much better. I have reworked all of the parser code and now it is much cleaner and awesome. The next update release should make the coding experience better for everyone. I might be able to get an update out before New Year's Eve.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

ganlinlao

hi, paul
    thanks very much
    Very looking forward to winFBE with a form designer, it will have a very significant impact on Freebasic's application on windows

Paul Squires

Thanks ganlinlao, WinFBE is my primary focus these days. I am working hard to make the code editor better, and also the visual designer. I have also been working on the forms backend which is a framework onto itself. I have renamed it WinFormsX so it won't be confused with Jose's WinFBX. WinFormsX is built on top of Jose's CWindow framework and other classes in his WinFBX but it is more like C# or VB.NET because it is object based and used a dot "." syntax. It also hides away alot of the things that tend to scare away Windows programmers - like message pumps, message handlers, etc. The new code editor improvements will make using WinFormsX easier because the popup autocomplete listboxes in the code editor will allow easy selection of things like Form/Control styles, properties, events, etc. More to come in the New Year.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

I have my environment now setup to compile 32 & 64 bit versions of the Scintilla DLL using TDM-GCC-64. Both DLLs work perfectly. I am also able to add and remove alternate lexers. I am now working on modifying the LexVB.cxx lexer to implement coloring for multiline comments. That is a feature that is currently sorely missing from the editor.

Also, the intellisense popups in the editor are now greatly improved. I totally re-wrote the parser and it works very well. It is also very small and easy to understand which will make it easier to add features to in the future.

Also, the split window editing works perfectly as well. The state of the split window is saved between editing sessions if it is part of a project.


Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

Finally!  :)
Attached is a screenshot of the newly compiled scintilla dll with a modified lexer I wrote in order to handle multiline comments.
That's one more thing off the to-do list and I was able to squeeze it in before the end of 2017.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

Working with Scintilla's built in Autocomplete popup listbox window is a bit of a pain. In hindsight it may have been easier to roll one of my own. To make the popup window more pleasing to the eye, i modified the source to change the WS_THICKFRAME style and to introduce a new style, STYLE_AUTOCOMPLETE, that I can set font name and size that is independent of all other styles. The Autocomplete listbox uses STYLE_DEFAULT by default (and that is hard coded in ScintillaBase.cxx) so I had to change that. I have set STYLE_AUTOCOMPLETE to be the same as the underlying CWindow default font facename and size.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Petrus Vorster

Immensely Exciting!!!!!

-Pete
-Regards
Peter

Paul Squires

Thanks Peter - lots of work to do but everyday more and more is getting done. I wasted a lot of time today trying to understand why notifications weren't being received from scintilla in the 64 bit version. Looks like my recompiling of the scintilla dll now also entails updating the SCI_Notification structure because some elements are now 8 byte in 64 bit versus 4 byte in 32 bit. Anyway, i have it working now but it did screw up most of my programming day.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

SeaVipe

Thanks, Paul! Really appreciate all your hard work; looking forward to WinFBE release with visual designer.

Clive Richey
Clive Richey

Paul Squires

Thanks Clive :)

Today I had wanted to upload a test version of the editor so people could try out the new autocomplete stuff. I have one more thing to add to the autocomplete popup listbox - basically, as you scroll through the list, I need a second tooltip type of window display next to the listbox that gives more info about the highlight listbox item. For example, if the a line contains a variable (ie. "p") then the popup tooltip would show that it is a "Long" 32-bit value (-2147483648 to +2147483647) and belongs to TYPE myType, etc. If I can get that written tomorrow then I will upload. This new autocomplete functionality is critical for the future framework that will be used in the visual designer. Easier to complete statements like, Form1.Caption = "MyCaption"
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

...and the 64-bit compiling has been running into trouble with compiling the resource file script (WinFBE.rc). The GoRC compiler reports an error when I add several of the new PNG images I am using for the visual designer. Strange that it errors on 64 bit but compiles fine on 32 bit. For now, I have commented out the images in order to make it compile but I do need to find a solution to why this occurs. I can build the .RES file but when it links to the main WinFBE.exe it causes an error (something like "file not found". I'll figure it out.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

...I'm still working on the autocomplete. Got over a major hurdle with it today. Hope to have something to show you guys this weekend.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

Hoped to have a code editor release this weekend but that's not going to happen. I am working on the WinAPI codetips file and I want to complete that before issuing a release for you guys to test. This autocomplete stuff has taking just a little longer than I expected.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer