On 10/23/2012 04:42 PM, Jens Mueller wrote:
Jens Mueller wrote:
Chad J wrote:
That's a reasonable suggestion. The only thing that can't be solved
is the trailing ) enclosing the text to be formatted. That needs a
% before it to prevent ambiguity with parentheses in the text
itself. So I could make your example:
writefln("The %c(red,white)(widgetometer%) is a device
formeasuring"); // for writing red on white
I was also considering the possibility of separating layout and
style by allowing some kind of style specification before the
printing, with a limited formatting spec for using the styles:
stdout.addTermTextStyle("id=myStyle, fg=red, bg=white, dark, underline");
writefln("The %c(myStyle)(widgetometer%) is a device for measuring");
Ideally, we get some users and ask them what they find easy to read. Or
look how other languages solve this.
Because I myself don't color my terminals that much I find it hard to
imagine.
I searched for some ruby libraries. I find ruby syntax often very easy.
We could use UFCS, e.g.
"some string".red
or
"some string".foreground(Color.red)
What do you think?
I find this way easier than format strings.
Just read the other post. This has the same problem.
Jens
Also I'm intentionally shooting for something very concise. If
verbosity conflicts, then it loses. I say verbosity because I find that
things get /less/ readable in situations like these if the syntax/naming
is lengthy. It causes alignment issues, text wrapping, noise, etc.
The thing I liked about the styling notion is that it allows things to
be spelled out more, but places this noise outside of the string being
formatted.
More thoughts:
// Do style parsing at compile-time if desired.
const myStyle = parseTermTextStyle("id=myStyle, fg=red, bg=white, dark,
underline"
// At runtime, stdout is told to use this.
stdout.addTermTextStyle(myStyle);
// I'm thinking it might look better by dropping a pair of parens,
// but using a . to make it clear where the formatter type ends
// and the style id begins.
writefln("The %C.myStyle(widgetometer%) is a device for measuring");
// Overloaded for convenience.
stdout.addTermTextStyle("id=rw, fg=red, bg=white, dark, underline");
// The user can choose how verbose they want their formatter to look.
// This is a very concise one.
writefln("The %C.rw(widgetometer%) is a device for measuring");
// Other note: %C is necessary. %c can't be used because that is
// already used for formatting single characters.
