Syntax highlighting

[mthompson]

Hello John,

Thanks for making your great software free. Next time I buy anything from Amazon, I'll be sure to go there via one of your ads.  

This has probably occurred to you already, but would it be a lot of work to add syntax highlighting to the editor? I know it's not really an important feature, but it does make for easier reading/writing of code.
Just a suggestion.
Thanks again,
Mike

[Admin]

Mike,

I have thought about it in the past, but to add syntax coloring would require me to change the editor to a "styled document". I haven't worked with those yet, so I don't know how difficult it is to deal with. But the style formatting codes, if they're embedded in the text, will make it very difficult to work with the existing Stats101 code.

I'll keep it in mind and look into how much trouble it would be to add coloring. No promises though.

John

[mthompson]

I'll keep it in mind and look into how much trouble it would be to add coloring. No promises though.

Ok, thanks John, that's all I ask. Obviously it's not going to be worth your while doing a massive rewrite for the sake of a relatively minor feature.

[Admin]

As an example to see how much help coloring would be, I made a mock up of some syntax-colored code:

https://i.servimg.com/u/f39/19/04/07/24/exampl10.png

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

John

[mthompson]

It looks good, John.

As a compromise, perhaps just capitalize all commands/keywords as they are entered?

Just a suggestion. It would be better than nothing if syntax highlighting is too much work, but then capitalizing may involve just as much, I've no idea.

[Admin]

Automatic capitalization wouldn't be that hard, but even now, you can capitalize all the commands in a program with a single click any time using the button with the capital "A" on it. And some people might prefer lower case, which can also be forced with a single click on the button with the lower case "a". So, with auto-capitalization, there would need to be a Preference that would allow it to be turned off for those who don't like it. 

I'm still looking into the syntax coloring, though. It's an attractive idea.

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