From: Neil Hodgson <nhodgson@...>
Date: 2001-10-04T06:46:13+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:22032] Re: Ruby-win syntax coloring... and some Q's

Henning von Rosen:

> I'd be interested in preffered coloring schemes. Are there any
> defacto-standard? If you've got a personal favourite, I'd be interested to
> look at it.

   There is a scheme defined in the ruby.properties file that comes with
SciTE but it uses grey for default text whereas black would appear better to
me. I don't use Ruby myself - I just monitor the newsgroup for issues like
this.

   Since I've been writing syntax-colouring editor code for the past couple
of years, my responses here are to be expected :-)

> (1) Do you think syntax coloring has pedagogical value?

   Yes. Even the earliest CS texts I read such as Wirth's "Algorithms + Data
Structures = Programs" used bold and italics in listings and it helped
learning to read the code and language.

> (2) Does it help see/read the code at a glance?

   Yes.

> (3) Does it help cath misspellings and lost quotes?

   Yes. More could be done here though as, for example, an identifier that
is only ever seen once is often a misspelling. A poor implementation could
just look inside the file but a good implementation would understand
interfile usage and scope.

   Neil