From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-01-04T22:15:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Scriptable text editor with Ruby?

On Jan 3, 2007, at 10:30 PM, Tim X wrote:

> What I think would be really good is semantic highlighting rather  
> than syntax highlighting - this may sound crazy, but I find syntax  
> problems to be the more trivial bugs to squash. Highlighting which  
> gave more information on the "meaning" of what you are coding would  
> probably provide more valuable information.

This is pretty much how TextMate works.

Language grammars divide the document you are editing into "scopes,"  
which might be something like "entity.name.type.class.ruby."  Themes  
then color these elements for syntax highlighting.

But they are used in many other places by the editor.  You can write  
commands that work only inside certain scopes, change editor  
behaviors when working with certain scopes, etc.

It's quite powerful.

James Edward Gray II