Last few weeks had been good for the new plugin. Nothing too fnacy yet, but now I think it has a firm basic structure and other necessary classes to name it as an “Eclispe SSE based editor”.
Regarding how it’s processing is done (since that’s what really matters), we have thought of following a somewhat same structure as in HTML+CSS plugins. This is due to the syntax of XQuery which is like a combination of XML and SQL, as you can see from these user cases. So as David suggested, the easiest way is to first understand how HTML plugin handles embedded CSS and then use the same technique to add syntax colouring in the new XQUERY_XPATH context after going through the XQuery Parser. So now I’m currently going through adding required classes for line styling and parsing.
So my immediate targets are,
1) Add line colouring and parsing XQuery partition
2) Add content assistance through re-parsing
It’s not easy to materialize a parser out of nowhere. But it has to begin from somewhere, is it not ?
Other than that the plugin now has basic support for Preference pages & Outline so they will also be improved as the project goes on.
Here is a peek at the new editor.
As I may have mentioned previously, without the help of David and other guys at Eclipse IRC I would have been totally lost. There are gaping holes in Eclipse main documentation and most clsss references on SSE aren’t complete. So as that is what any newcomer will look in to when faced with a tricky situation, I truly think more attention must be put into improving Eclipse documentation and who knows, that alone could attract new energy into Eclipse community.
Very cool, keep up the good work!
Hay thanks @Chris 🙂