[texworks] Fututre Needs - Was: Highlighting for LaTeX3 and LuaTeX

[Paul A Norman]

Arno,

 I should add that your posting highlights (no pun intended) the newer
developments in *TeX galaxies, and the future needs that editors like
TeXworks need to start accounting for now or be Eclipse(d) elsewhere
(pun intended).

Direct disk/system font usage - fontspec, LuaTeX internal Lua sections
and direct lua are only some of the things to be more fully provided
for and to help people with as thet enter the ever expanding *TeX
universe.

Embedding sound/movies/3d ...

Reminds me of the pointers (although comically given) in a certain
speech delivered by Prof. Donald Knuth <ring> <ding> <ring> <ring>
http://river-valley.tv/media/conferences/tug-2010/Don-Knuth/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKaI78K_rgA

Good to open a slow/deliberative ongoing dialogue up here on what is
needed ahead ...

Paul

On 10 August 2011 11:53, Paul A Norman <paul.a.norman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Arno,
>
> There may be some limitations to the current syntax highlighting
> regime in TeXworks, I already know that the period . breaks it when
> using it for TeXwork's QtScript.
>
> You can add sections like [Lua] in the syntax-patterns.txt
> and manually switch to them at present or write script to use a hook
> to recognise when a different type of document has been opened (either
> by file extension or through internal investigation).
>
> Have you looked at the help information in the manual for writing your
> own syntax sections in syntax-patterns.txt?  Appendix section "A.1
> Syntax highlighting" gives a good overview.
>
> You can access your syntax-patterns.txt through your TeXworks menu>
> Scripts / Scripting TeXworks / Show Scripts Folder then go up one
> folder and find the folder  "configuration"
>
> Any thing that you need that does not already work (for example _ or :
> may break the syntax highlighting regime as does . already mentioned),
> you may want to write an issue up (perhaps do a search there first) on
> http://code.google.com/p/texworks/issues/list
>
> Paul
>
> On 10 August 2011 00:00, Arno Trautmann <Arno.Trautmann at gmx.de> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> after LuaTeX and LuaLaTeX have been accepted as engines, I wonder if it is
>> possible to also add the necessary highlighting support for them. However, I
>> have some more requests regarding highlighting, so this mail will be a bit
>> lengthy, sorry:
>>
>> First the request for LaTeX3 source highlighting:
>> The normal (La)TeX highlighting does not cover this, as LaTeX3 control
>> sequence names can have _ as well as : in their names, like:
>>
>> \cs_new:Npn
>>
>> Everything left of the : is the command (or function, in l3 terms) name, and
>> the right-hand part specifies the arguments, in this case 3 arguments are
>> needed. Long story short, it should be sufficient to add _ and : to the list
>> of allowed characters for a control sequence. Is this possible?
>>
>> Now the Lua part: First, there should be a “Lua documents” choice in the
>> “Files of type: …” drop-down menu, as most of the LuaTeX code is stored in
>> external Lua files. In such files, basic highlighting for Lua should be
>> offered. A bit more complicated is the use of \directlua, \latelua or the
>> luacode environment, as then we have Lua code inside a .tex file … In a
>> perfect world, TeXworks would recognize these structures and apply the
>> correct highlighting.
>> The most complicated case, however, are .dtx files, at least in the way I
>> like to use them. Consider the following piece of a package:
>>
>> ——
>>
>> \cs_new:Npn\unuppercasecolor
>> {\directlua{luatexbase.remove_from_callback("post_linebreak_filter","uppercasecolor")}}
>> %    \end{macrocode}
>> % Now the setup for the |\text|-versions. We utilize Lua\TeX s
>> % attributes to mark all nodes that should be manipulated. The macros
>> % should be |\long| to allow arbitrary input.
>> %\iffalse
>> %</package>
>> %<*lua>
>> %\fi
>> %    \begin{macrocode}
>> Hhead = node.id("hhead")
>> RULE = node.id("rule")
>>
>> ——
>>
>> Here we have:
>> • (La)TeX(3) code (\cs_new:Npn …) that should go to the final .tex file and
>> thus is not commented, needs normal (l3) highlighting, but containing Lua
>> code in a \directlua statement.
>> • Commented code that should go to the documentation; for the editor,
>> everything is just a comment and is not highlighted at all. Here, TeXworks
>> should recognize that it is a .dtx file, and not handle everything after a
>> single % as a comment.
>> • Tags for the driver file that are neither TeX nor Lua style. <tags> should
>> be quite easily highlightable?
>> • plain Lua code that goes to the final Lua helper file.
>>
>> Now, my feature request is: Implement correct highlighting so that I can
>> write my package using TeXworks.
>>
>> ok, just joking … but how much of the highlighting do you think could be
>> done? How much should be done, considering that not too many users of
>> TeXworks will hack LaTeX3 syntax into a dtx to create LuaTeX code?
>>
>> Thanks for your time,
>> cheers
>> Arno
>>
>