- From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@iinet.net.au>
- Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 12:05:33 +1000
Ryan Johnson wrote: > 3) Extensible syntax highlighting (coloring). I am aware that a ton of > code editors don't even do this well. The ability to load a syntax > definition file and have it color a block of code would do wonders for > making the web a more friendly place to script. The difficulty with this comes from creating a syntax definition file that can accurately describe the syntax and colour coding necessary for whatever lanugage it's describing, whether it be XML/HTML/SGML, C/C++, Java, Perl, or any other language. Such a file type would be out of the scope of web apps, but perhaps providing the ability to reference a syntax definition file with a URI could be included. However, there's still the problem that no standard file type for that purpose exists; and, AFAIK, no work is currently being done to define a standard fomat. Many editors use proprietary formats with varying degrees of extensibility, or even have the syntax detection and colouring hard coded within the application, but I doubt any of those would be suitable for use in a web application. One would most likely need some kind of new XML language, but then your still stuck with the backwards compatibity issues of current UAs not supporting that new format. Although, you've given me another idea. It would be nice to be able to reference a DTD or Schema that could be used by the UA to validate the user's input as a valid (X)HTML/XML fragment. That feature would be really helpful with many blogs that currently suffer from validation problems that come with readers posting comments containing markup. -- Lachlan Hunt lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au http://www.lachy.id.au/
Received on Wednesday, 30 June 2004 19:05:33 UTC