Hi Peter, Thanks for your offer. JavaCC is indeed a small user base, and from what others are saying ANTLR might be a bit more modern and relevant. Reading between the lines it looks like the whole support for grammar development in Netbeans is also pretty out of date, so maybe a better thing to do would be to dive into that first.
Having said that, I’m going to focus on XML support as that seems to be a more pressing problem. I’ll keep your code in mind when I get around to looking at the broader language support problem. Cheers Ross > On 16 Jun 2017, at 2:57 pm, Peter Blemel <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Ross, > > > I have written two JavaCC based language editors on the NetBeans platform > (for AI applications). There used to be a plugin (see > http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/20277/javacc), but once I had my basic > language support in place I didn't have much need to go back and edit my > grammars so I've lost track of it. I don't know if it works in recent > versions of NetBeans. > > > I would be happy to contribute to a grammar editor, either based on that > project or something new. In my opinion a user should never see the JavaCC > grammar implementation if it can be avoided (unless they really want to), > favoring autocoding from some kind of model instead. I have some ideas about > using the visual API and wizards to assist in the development process. Given > a model, maybe Rule based, we can graph the structure, identify problems, > analyze lookahead, etc to help develop and debug new grammars without getting > bogged down in JavaCC specific issues (not to mention debugging problems in > the grammar). Such a system could be re-targeted to other parsers and > language implementations. > > > I don't know how big the user community for such an editor might be (small, I > imagine), so it might be a good first step to dust off that other project > first and use it to look at auto-coded JavaCC grammars from a rapid prototype > before deciding if we want to put in any more effort. > > > Drop me a line and we'll see about getting something started. > > Best, > Peter Blemel > ________________________________ > From: Ross Lamont <[email protected]> > Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 9:32 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Introductory Email > > Hi everyone, > > I am an independent developer, previously architect at genbook.com and other > places. I’ve been developing software for over 20 years, and using netbeans > since around 2003. I have dabbled with plugins from time to time, but I’m > now hoping to make a serious contribution in the XML space. I’ve been > working on some RelaxNG editing plugins, as well as looking into improving > the general XML validation approach as it looks like it hasn’t been touched > in a while. > > I’m also going to have a crack at a javaCC editor, as it will assist others > writing other language support for Netbeans. > > Best Regards > Ross
