Re: Anjuta2 editor interface limitations

[andy piper freeuk com (Andy Piper)]

Biswa wrote:
> It seems that Anjuta2 uses a limited interface for the editor
> (gdl/idl/editor-buffer.idl). Because of this, things like getting
> current word, etc. are extremely inefficient
[snip]

Very interesting. I was completely unaware of this - largely through 
having spent no time getting to grips with the Anjuta2 codebase yet. 
It is a very useful perspective.

> Another problem: there are no interfaces for telling the editor to do
> stuff like show completion lists, calltips, etc. which are pretty basic
> requirements for an IDE. Further, from what I got from the code, editor
> gutters are implemented seperately from the editor. This, IMO, does not
> make sense since editor gutters are an integral part of the editor GUI
> (e.g. Scintilla).

Well of course, in the case of Anjuta2, the editor is Glimmer. This might 
go some way to explaining the current design. However, ISTR talk of the 
editor component being "pluggable" via Bonobo, so we could use e.g. gvim 
or Scintilla instead. The features you mention here are indeed very 
important, and things which many Anjuta1 (and Visual Studio, Eclipse, 
etc.) users are going to miss if they are not added to Anjuta2. 

Now that Scintilla has been ported to GTK2, there's no reason why 
someone couldn't take a stab at adding it to Anjuta2 - bringing with it 
all the goodies like the gutter, easier word selection, and the functional 
things which we've enjoyed when using it in Anjuta1.

There are disadvantages of course.
- Scintilla is not a "GNOME project", unlike glimmer2
- it is really hard to add new highlighting / language modes to 
Scintilla, compared with glimmer (AFAIUI)
- It would be a lot of work to integrate it (I imagine)

One of the long standing requests from Anjuta1 users was either the 
use of the gvim embeddable component thingy, or vi-style keybindings. 
If Anjuta2 ever reaches a wider audience, these kind of calls will 
crop up here too.

> Please let me know what you think on this issue.

All good points. I hope there can be a more active discussion of 
similar issues on this list.


-- 
Andy Piper - Farnborough, Hampshire (UK)
andy piper freeuk com
http://www.andypiper.co.uk/