From: Huw Collingbourne <huw@...>
Date: 2007-04-15T18:55:09+09:00
Subject: Re: What is your favourite IDE? Eclipse DLTK!

Thanks for the extra information about 'semantic highlighting'. I can't 
quite picture how we would be able to indicate scope information clearly 
using this technique, particularly as we already indicate syntax information 
with colouring.

However, it would be possible to display some kind of 'scope diagram'. The 
fact of the matter is that our IntelliSense system already does all the code 
analysis needed to provide scope information. It 'knows about' scope due to 
public, private and protected; it knows about singletons, modules and 
mixins, class, global, local and instance variables (and so on...) so all we 
need to do is to find a meaningful way of displaying this information to the 
end user. As I say, I'm not sure that in-editor colouring is the best way to 
do this. Maybe a tree-view of some sort?

In fact, our IntelliSense already displays a good deal of this information 
(different glyphs indicate different types of variables, whether or not a 
method is public or private - and, of course, it only shows what is in scope 
at any given point) but currently this is only displayed either in the form 
of 'as you type' completion lists and parametr info or in combo boxes (the 
code navigator bars over the editor). In that form, it doesn't fulfil your 
requirements and I'm sure we can come up with something that does. I'm 
adding this to our development Task List now ;-)

best wishes
Huw Collingbourne

http://www.sapphiresteel.com
Ruby Programming In Visual Studio 2005