I've built a basic editor which have code auto-completion feature and also shows parameter list. Now I want to add highlight matching bracket feature. How to do this?
Update
I know some basic algorithm to find the matching bracket, but don't know how to highlight it! [to change the color or making it bold of the matching bracket].
I'm using multi-line textbox for this issue.
Based on your current features you likely to have some sort of parsed tree of the source. If it is true you should be able to relatively easy to find node that represent braces above current location in the source.
Otherwise counting braces as Hunter McMillen suggested may be enough. Don't forget to skip comments and string literals if you support them.
Related
I want to create a simple editor like Notepad++ with simple functionality... I need to color a specific word in the rich text box area. How can I do that?
For example: when the user write these word, I want to color them to the blue color. These words are: for, while, if, try, etc.
How can I make the richtextbox to select a specific word and then color them?
And, if I want to make a comment and color everything after the //, how is that done in the richtextbox?
How do I number the line in the text box, so I can now the line number when I'm coding in my editor?
Here's some code you can build on in order to achieve the functionality you want.
private void ColourRrbText(RichTextBox rtb)
{
Regex regExp = new Regex("\b(For|Next|If|Then)\b");
foreach (Match match in regExp.Matches(rtb.Text))
{
rtb.Select(match.Index, match.Length);
rtb.SelectionColor = Color.Blue;
}
}
The CodeProject article Enabling syntax highlighting in a RichTextBox shows how to use RegEx in a RichTextBox to perform syntax highlighting. Specifically, look at the SyntaxRichtTextBox.cs for the implementation.
In general, you have to work on the selection in RichTextBox. You can manipulate the current selection using the Find method or using SelectionStart and SelectionLength properties. Then you can change properties of selected text using SelectionXXX properties. For example, SelectionColor would set the color of current selection, etc. So you have to parse text in richtextbox and then select part of texts and change their properties as per your requirements.
Writing a good text editor using RichTextBox can be quite cumbersome. You should use some library such as Scintilla for that. Have a look at ScintillaNet, a .NET wrapper over Scintilla.
Did you know that Notepad++ uses Scintilla?
You actually do not have to reinvent the wheel by going through all the trouble as there is a .NET port of Scintilla named ScintillaNET which you can freely embed in your application as the source code editor :)
But to answer your question, there are few parts that you need to understand
Finding what to color
When to color
How to color
For the first part, there may be different approaches, but I think using regular expressions would be a good choice. I am sorry, but I don't know regular expressions much so I cannot help you in that case.
When to color is very crucial and if you do it wrong, your application will suffer a heavy performance penalty. I suggest you refer to XPath Visualizer which was done by our own Stack Overflow member, Cheeso. Take a look at the source on how the coloring of the syntax was done. But if you ScintillaNET, everything would be taken care of. Anyway, I really can't seem to find this documentation where he clearly showed how the coloring of the text was done. I would most definitely post it here if I find it.
The third question I think is covered by VinayC. But basically you use SelectionColor along with SelectionStart.
here is a good link on c-sharpcorner.com website on basic richtextbox syntax highlighting. I assume that you and any one visiting this page for similar problem want to do it for learning purpose. But if any one wants to do it for some making some comercial level IDE then it must use scintilla or some similar.
An other approach for this is to directly change the RTF of the richtextbox. Look in codeproject.com there are lot of articles similar to this problem.
I had some problems with that and here is my solution, beats me why it has to be done like this, but it works:
// position on end of control...
richTextBox.UpdateLayout();
richTextBox.ScrollToEnd();
richTextBox.UpdateLayout();
// ...then select text and it will be position on top of control.
richTextBox.Focus();
richTextBox.Selection.Select(foundRange.Start, foundRange.End);
richTextBox.BringIntoView();
Vb.net implementation
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Private Sub formatString()
Dim rg =New Regex("\b(for|while|if|try)\b")
Dim m As Match
For Each m In rg.Matches(RichTextBox1.Text)
RichTextBox1.Select(m.Index,m.Length)
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor=Color.Green
Next
End Sub
I am using Silverlight RichTextEditor ( reference ) that does not have bulleting or numbering of text. Is there any way to do so in a simpler manner.
If you need to apply bullets/numbering/indent to selected-text in a RichTextBox, then you have to programmatically find Paragraph elements inside selected-text and insert the corresponding character (bullet or number of tab) at the start of each Paragraph element.
Check out here for detailed explanation.
Or,
Check out the ordered/unordered list controls explained in this link. You can extend its functionality to acheive what you intend to do. I have used it to show hierarchical data using nested lists and found it fairly easy to modify it to my needs.
at the moment I'm trying to get into Windows Store App Development and I'm stuck at some point.
I want to implement sort of a "markdown language" like the one on stackoverflow to highlight certain parts of text input.
Besides that I want to give the user the ability to use different font colors on his text.
The RichEditBox seems to be the ideal control for this task, but I don't know how to detect markup entering on the fly.
For example when the user enters **Test** the text should be transformed to Test immediately.
I have tried to approach this by listening to the "TextChanged" event and looking if the user enters **. If this is the case and if he entered the sequence ** already one time before, then I'm setting the character format of the text range from the end of the first annotation sequence (start marker) to the beginning of the second (close marker) annotation to bold.
But this solutions seems to be very quick and dirty.
My second thought was to use the WebView control to render the text after preprocessing it with "Markdown Sharp".
But then the user won't be able to edit text.
So I need to get some advice or tip on approaching this problem. I also looked into writing a custom RichEditBox control, but I have no experience in custom control development and there aren't that many resources on the web for Windows 8 development for now.
Thanks in advance.
As I see it, your problem is that you want to edit the "source" based on Markdown syntax AND show the formatted result in the same place. How would you revert Test to regular, as long as the asterisks are gone? If the answer is "using a button" then why not use the button to make it bold in first place?
However, you could do a hybrid thing: apply formatting in the source text, while maintaining the Markdown markup (not sure if this is entirely doable for all Markdown tricks, though). That is, **Test** would look in the source like **Test**. For the final, formatted result you would use a separate view, such as RichTextBlock.
In order to do the hybrid formatting, an option would be to have a background thread matching regularly the whole text against regular expressions specific to the Markdown syntax. For each match the corresponding text range would then be formatted accordingly.
I have found what seems to be an easy solution to disable certain items in a ComboBox in here. It states:
You can disable an item in a list box or combo box by adding a single
backslash to the beginning of the expression.
However if I write
testBox.Items.Add("\Test item");
or
testBox.Items.Add(\"Test item");
it gives a syntax error in VS2010. Maybe this function has been disabled in later than 2005 versions?
If I put an item through a VS2010 designer like this
\Test item
or I write
testBox.Items.Add("\\Test item");
then it appears with a backslash and not is disabled.
Thus my question is: is this method somehow available and I just fail to understand how to use it or I do have to create a custom ComboBox to achieve my goal (in title)?
sadly is it not possible for the combobox control.
I would recommend to just remove the item from the combobox list instead of trying to disable it.
with one of those 3 ways:
// To remove item with index 0:
comboBox1.Items.RemoveAt(0);
// To remove currently selected item:
comboBox1.Items.Remove(comboBox1.SelectedItem);
// To remove "Tokyo" item:
comboBox1.Items.Remove("Tokyo");
If you absolutely need to disable items, you will need to create a custom combobox.
UPDATE 1: This does NOT work, but I'm leaving it as is so the comments below make sense.
UPDATE 2: To answer your question... After a bit of googling around I believe your only option to achieve this with WinForms is to create your own control as you suggested.
I suspect the rules for working with items that begin with multiple backslashes would apply to escape sequences too. How about:
testBox.Items.Add("\]Test Item");
I'm not able to test it out, but it looks like it should work.
In general: You need to escape the backslash by writing \\. Otherwise the compiler tries to interprete \T as an escape sequence (which does not exist). I guess the designer does this for you already, but you can always take a look in the generated source code ;)
About disabling combobox items: The documentation you linked seems to apply for ListBoxes, not ComboBoxes. Furthermore, it refers to VisualFox Pro, not Windows.Forms. So I guess this won't work ;)
According to this discussion, you will need to subclass the control and overrride its paint handlers.
But before doing that, I would simply remove (or not even add) those items you wish to disable.
I want to create a simple editor like Notepad++ with simple functionality... I need to color a specific word in the rich text box area. How can I do that?
For example: when the user write these word, I want to color them to the blue color. These words are: for, while, if, try, etc.
How can I make the richtextbox to select a specific word and then color them?
And, if I want to make a comment and color everything after the //, how is that done in the richtextbox?
How do I number the line in the text box, so I can now the line number when I'm coding in my editor?
Here's some code you can build on in order to achieve the functionality you want.
private void ColourRrbText(RichTextBox rtb)
{
Regex regExp = new Regex("\b(For|Next|If|Then)\b");
foreach (Match match in regExp.Matches(rtb.Text))
{
rtb.Select(match.Index, match.Length);
rtb.SelectionColor = Color.Blue;
}
}
The CodeProject article Enabling syntax highlighting in a RichTextBox shows how to use RegEx in a RichTextBox to perform syntax highlighting. Specifically, look at the SyntaxRichtTextBox.cs for the implementation.
In general, you have to work on the selection in RichTextBox. You can manipulate the current selection using the Find method or using SelectionStart and SelectionLength properties. Then you can change properties of selected text using SelectionXXX properties. For example, SelectionColor would set the color of current selection, etc. So you have to parse text in richtextbox and then select part of texts and change their properties as per your requirements.
Writing a good text editor using RichTextBox can be quite cumbersome. You should use some library such as Scintilla for that. Have a look at ScintillaNet, a .NET wrapper over Scintilla.
Did you know that Notepad++ uses Scintilla?
You actually do not have to reinvent the wheel by going through all the trouble as there is a .NET port of Scintilla named ScintillaNET which you can freely embed in your application as the source code editor :)
But to answer your question, there are few parts that you need to understand
Finding what to color
When to color
How to color
For the first part, there may be different approaches, but I think using regular expressions would be a good choice. I am sorry, but I don't know regular expressions much so I cannot help you in that case.
When to color is very crucial and if you do it wrong, your application will suffer a heavy performance penalty. I suggest you refer to XPath Visualizer which was done by our own Stack Overflow member, Cheeso. Take a look at the source on how the coloring of the syntax was done. But if you ScintillaNET, everything would be taken care of. Anyway, I really can't seem to find this documentation where he clearly showed how the coloring of the text was done. I would most definitely post it here if I find it.
The third question I think is covered by VinayC. But basically you use SelectionColor along with SelectionStart.
here is a good link on c-sharpcorner.com website on basic richtextbox syntax highlighting. I assume that you and any one visiting this page for similar problem want to do it for learning purpose. But if any one wants to do it for some making some comercial level IDE then it must use scintilla or some similar.
An other approach for this is to directly change the RTF of the richtextbox. Look in codeproject.com there are lot of articles similar to this problem.
I had some problems with that and here is my solution, beats me why it has to be done like this, but it works:
// position on end of control...
richTextBox.UpdateLayout();
richTextBox.ScrollToEnd();
richTextBox.UpdateLayout();
// ...then select text and it will be position on top of control.
richTextBox.Focus();
richTextBox.Selection.Select(foundRange.Start, foundRange.End);
richTextBox.BringIntoView();
Vb.net implementation
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Private Sub formatString()
Dim rg =New Regex("\b(for|while|if|try)\b")
Dim m As Match
For Each m In rg.Matches(RichTextBox1.Text)
RichTextBox1.Select(m.Index,m.Length)
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor=Color.Green
Next
End Sub