Problems creating a new user defined language

[MaDill]

Hi,

I created a new user defined language for Denso robots called pacscript. I would say it looks not bad, but I still have some problems. I checked the link from the plugin http://udl20.weebly.com/introduction.html but it was not helpfull.

I use Notepad++ 7.3.1 64bit with “User Defined Language v.2.1.0.12”

Here is a sample program with the problems: http://pastebin.com/0vvpwrA2
This is my UDF export: http://pastebin.com/DnrVtc6n

Thank you for your time and help.

Best Regards
Matthias

[MaDill]

I add some number problems to the sample program: http://pastebin.com/eQCqJUCj

[PeterJones]

FYI, UDL 2.1 is better described at http://ivan-radic.github.io/udl-documentation/ (the weebly link is for the older 2.0).

(Sorry, no specific hints; I don’t have the time to study your examples, especially since the require going to an obfuscated link on an external site, which I try to avoid)

[MaDill]

Thank you for the new link, maybe this can be updated in notepad++. But nevertheless I could solve some problems. But two main things are left:

When I have words with numbers at the end and these are in parentheses, the number is displayed as number. For Example:

IntVariable1 = 42

This will be displayed normal

If (IntVariable1 = 42) Then
End If

Here the 1 is highlighted as number. When I remove the nesting from the Delimiter, then allso the 42 is not highlighted anymore as a number.

The next problem are the comments
Comments can be ’ or Rem
’ is working fine, but with Rem I have the problem, that also “Call RemoveCharacter()” will be a comment. How to define that Rem is only the comment when there is a blank behind?

The next thing what I can not work is the code folding. For easy Function…End Function it is working, but more complex not. I used following settings in the “Folding in code 2 style”

• Open: Function Sub If For Select Do
• Middle: Else
  *Close: “End Function” “End Sub” “End If” Next “End Select” Loop

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Here is some sample code:

Function TestFunctionWithoutArg As Integer
		'dasdsd
End Function

Function TestFunction1() As Integer
	Do While (IntCounter < 42)
		If (IntCounter <= 0) Then
			Exit Loop
		End If
		IntCounter = IntCounter + 1
	Loop
	'dasdsd
End Function

Function TestFunction2(ByVal IntInput As Integer, ByRef IntOutput As Integer) As Integer
	For IntCounter = 1 To (IntCounter1 + 3) 'the "1" in IntCounter1 should be no number
		If (IntCounter = 13) Then
			Exit For '"For" should be not used as open folding
		End If
	Next IntCounter

	IntVarNumber1 = 12
	IntVarNumber1Plus = 13

	If (IntVarNumber1 = 12) Then
		'dasdsd
	End If

	If (IntVarNumber1Plus = 13) Then
		'dasdsd
	End If

	IntNumberBin1 = &B1031001 'should be no number because of the "3" inside

	'line comment
	Rem Comment
	Call Remove '"Remove" should be not displayed as comment
	Call Remove() '"Remove" should be not displayed as comment

	Select Case IntCounter
		Case 1
		Case 13
		Case Else '"Else" should be not used as open folding
	End Select

	If (IntCounter = 42) Then
		Exit Function '"Function" should be not used as open folding
	Else
		IntCounter = 47
	End If
End Function


Sub TestSub3(ByRef IntOutput As Integer)
	If (IO[IntOutput] = On) Then
		Reset IO[IntOutput]
	Else
		Set IO[IntOutput]
		Exit Sub '"Sub" should be not used as open folding
	End If
End Sub


Sub TestSub1()
	'blabla
End Sub


Sub TestSub2
	'blabla
End Sub

[PeterJones]

@MaDill,

In December, I put in issue 2713 , and ivan-radic and chcg already talked about having Don Ho update the link to the UDL2.1 documentation; I have no idea when or if it will actually happen, however.

Other than that, I don’t think you’ll like my answers. Sorry in advance.

For the “Rem” vs “RemoveCharacter()”, I’ve come across this before (I couldn’t quickly find it in the forum, though I thought it was with “Rem” vs “Remove” or maybe “Remember” – but maybe it was in my own experimenting). As far as I remember, there is nothing that can be done with UDL2.1. If UDL were to add another version of the comment style that required separators (similar to the operators 1 not requiring spaces, but operators 2 requiring spaces), it would fix it; or if UDL were to allow regular expressions for the various entries, it would be an easy fix, Rem(?![a-zA-Z]) or similar.

For the complex folding: because UDL2.1 is doing simple word-matching, rather than allowing full regular expression matching for fold indicators and keywords, there is no way you can disambiguate “Exit For” from "For blah = ", or “Case Else” from “If”/“Else”/“End If”. If it were using full regular expressions, those would be doable.

For the (Variable1 = 2) incorrectly highlighting both the 1 and the 2 as numbers, but Variable1 = 1 working just fine outside of parentheses: that seems more like a bug than a lack of feature. I was able to re-create it with a very simple UDL language: Number styling was set to something obvious (Foreground=white, background=black), Delimiter 1 was set to (/), style: underline, foreground=red, background=white, and nesting=numbers

I filtered the notepad-plus-plus repo issues for UDL , and saw 28 open UDL issues; you could read if any of those mention your problems or not. If not, I’d suggest adding them as separate issues, with a simplified example (don’t show your full UDL definition, just the smallest UDL that shows the exact issue – like I described for the in-parentheses vs no-parentheses re-creation, so there are no external downloads required to understand the issue – though an embedded ![](url://to/img.png) would probably be helpful, like I did). The nested-number-in-delimiter might possibly be a bug fix in UDL2.1, whereas for full regular expressions for the various entries, it’s probably going to be a UDL3 feature request; ivan-radic is non-publically working on UDL3, but no news as to when it might happen.

[Claudia Frank]

@MaDill

may I ask you why you do not use the builtin visual basic lexer?
Your provided example matches 100% in terms of syntax.

Cheers
Claudia

[MaDill]

@PeterJones Thank you for your help.
@Claudia-Frank Good idea. I didn’t check this, because I added all the special keywords and preprocessor word already. I added now all the special keywords to the langs.xml and this is working. But I need some more keyword groups and not only “instre1”. I added the the “instre2” and “type1” to “type4”, add them also in the “styler.xml” but it is not working. The keywords are in the list, when I check Settings > “Style Configurator…”. Do you have one more hint?

[Claudia Frank]

@MaDill

I’ve tested it and can confirm your findings but currently, I do not understand why it
can’t be done. From your description it sounds that you’ve done what you needed to do
except that vb lexer only support 4 different keyword lists.
The issue seems to be the keyword list as I see that the styles I have defined are
registered with scintilla editor. Unfortunately I cannot see which keywords
are registered. I will try to see if I can figure out what’s going on.

Cheers
Claudia

[Claudia Frank]

@MaDill

ok - I assume I found the reason why it isn’t allowing more than one keyword list.
in ScintillaEditView.h

void setVBLexer() {
	setLexer(SCLEX_VB, L_VB, LIST_0);
};

contrary to the LexVB.cxx

static void ColouriseVBDoc(unsigned int startPos, int length, int initStyle,
                           WordList *keywordlists[], Accessor &styler, bool vbScriptSyntax) {

    WordList &keywords = *keywordlists[0];
    WordList &keywords2 = *keywordlists[1];
    WordList &keywords3 = *keywordlists[2];
    WordList &keywords4 = *keywordlists[3];

As this is hardcoded - I don’t see how this can be changed easily.

Cheers
Claudia

[MaDill]

@Claudia Frank Thank you for looking in the source code. Then I decided to stick with my own created UDL even code folding and some others are missing. It feels better to me to have at least the requested keywords are highlighted.

Best regards
Matthias