I like the Idea. It will make stuff easier. Another Option and I think this would be a great enhancement to simple add a new language (maybe only Syntax highlighting to the Editor) is a similar functionality as in Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text or Notepad++. They uses languages files for syntax highlighting. Of Course they are Definition files like grammar and so on, but simpler. Not with the generating stuff for JavaCC or ANTLR.
Here are the files which are used for Notepad++ http://docs.notepad-plus-plus.org/index.php?title=User_Defined_Language_Files Here for Sublime Text: http://docs.sublimetext.info/en/latest/extensibility/syntaxdefs.html Here for Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensionAPI/language-support (They uses textmate files) Here for Ultraedit: http://www.ultraedit.com/downloads/extras/wordfiles.html#wordfiles So this will be very handy to have the same Syntax from one of them above to use alredy defined files from other Editors (maybe where it has the most files) to bring a new language support to NetBeans, which is not supported. This will be very simple to have this. More work for the implementation first but, download such file in a specific Folder in NetBeans and NetBeans will parse e.g. TCL, C#, F# whatever. Regards Chris Von: Peter Blemel Gesendet: Samstag, 17. Juni 2017 18:25 An: [email protected] Betreff: Re: AW: Introductory Email In the context of this discussion the concept is a NetBeans editor module generator, in which we auto-code all (or as much as we can) of the supporting files necessary to create a NetBeans editor plugin for the users' new language. In that context additional jars shouldn't' be an issue, but of course if we're going to go to all of that time and effort then it should be able to emit code for other purposes. With that in mind I have other applications that are probably already suffering from bit rot. I haven't had to write a grammar in quite a while, and was unfamiliar with ANTLR so I had to do some reading. After browsing a few web sites I like that ANTLRs output looks cleaner, can target multiple languages, and that there appear to be significantly more (and more robust) tools already available. I found an old JavaCC branch supporting C/C++ targets but it doesn't appear to be supported. I didn't look into if the other ANTLR target languages require additional libraries, or had time to explore how much Netbeans support is already available. I hope to find time this summer to try writing a new parser (maybe just a toy), but so far in general ANTLR appears to be a better choice if we're going to develop an editor generator. Peter ________________________________ From: Bertrand Delacretaz <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2017 2:52 AM I tend to agree but a difference that can be important depending on the context is that JavaCC doesn't have any external runtime dependencies, whereas ANTLR requires a few jars. -Bertrand
