Syntax coloring for wm?

[josip]

Just something to chew on ...

http://yfrog.com/45onu0j
http://yfrog.com/htdab0j

[Justin Verboncouer]

Wow, I feel unobservant. I saw these pics on your twitter and I didn't notice anything different. 

I think syntax highlighting would be great. Do you have any details on how your considering implementing it? Would users specify the highlight colors?

[josip]

Don't know yet. It is all open for a discussion. The most basic idea I
am playing with right now is allowing // inline comments (presented
with dimmed color and maybe italicized) and ## headlines (dimmed and
bigger??) and not much more. Just to test if engine is viable enough
(I intend to implement my own text coloring algorithms). If it will
work ok (latency problems), then there are many possibilities:
allowing users to bind jump masks to specific color&format for example
- one would be able to highlight all sentences longer than x words ...
or all "" quoted parts ... Or visually indent the > paragraphs (or
just those starting with a tab for that matter). And stuff like
that ... :)

As for the custom colors: wm is still monochrome 2 color app. You can
somehow cheat this with new color controls in 2.0 ... but I think that
new "totally foreign" colors shouldn't be allowed. Or should they?
i.


On Dec 1, 5:38 pm, Justin Verboncouer <naturefreak...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[enniot]

Interesting... :)
Hoever, what's the font used there ?

[josip]

Cambria Normal and Italic.
i.

[Karl]

Outstanding ideas!

By all means: GO ON!

Drooly drool.

> new "totally foreign" colors shouldn't be allowed. Or should they?

Personally I love multi-colors or to give it more authority let me
paraphrase Tony Buzan (inventor/developer of Mind Maps): "One color is
a mono tone. It's monotonous or boooriiing. Not brain friendly."

That would be oh so cool. Writing stuff all colored up, then Ctrl+Shift
+e and blip it's a "reputable" document.

Go on, get lots done

Karl

PS: Just a thought that popped up: Such feature packs could be in
modules. So that one can switch it on or off to add more complexity
only when needed. Like check a box and you get a new tab in the setup.
No clue whether that helps.

[Jan]

I appreciate anything that makes my text close to a real book. Thus,
rendering _italics_ in italics and *bold* in bold would be nice.
But multiple font sizes, or polychrome behaviors won't be of any help
for me, except perhaps a dimmed color for things that are out of the
text flow, such as //notes.

Jan

On Dec 1, 6:10 pm, josip <broj...@gmail.com> wrote:

[samokhov]

I think it's a splendid idea. Beautiful and very useful.
As for coloring, I guess Jan's proposal is pretty well-balanced. You
can just dim a bunch of masks that are out of the text flow.
As a slightly extended version of that, you can add a few colors to
the color schemes. E.g.: Normal text, Header,[ Heading,] Note and
maybe Custom color 1 and Custom color 2 (for, you know, some custom
masks). All in all, I don't think someone would need an awful lot of
colors.

Also, I agree with Jan on *bold* and _italics_. I mean, .txt is great
for compatibility, but for readability some more WYSIWYG would be
welcome.

As for bold, italics, font size and maybe indent settings for jump
masks -- I don't know if that should be bundled with a color scheme
(like it is in IDEs) or whether it should go elsewhere and be valid
across all color schemes. I guess the former should be fine. I don't
think people really use more than two color schemes (I use one for
bright-lit environments and another for dark ones). Unless they are
procrastinating, in which case they're gonna welcome as much options
as possible anyway :)

[Chris Lott]

I personally prefer that elements which reflect their formatting
literally still retain their markup as well-- so turning the *bold
text* bold is good, but hiding the * marks not so much.

I'm partially switching to Mac. In all honesty, the single program I
can't live without is WM. I've been browsing similar programs on the
Mac, and while some are OK (and at least one seems like a direct copy
of WM in many ways), none of them provide the whole package.

Have to admit that I like some of the Markdown shortcuts in other
programs though, such as Textmate. And, related, some of the features
in this little project:
http://brettterpstra.com/markdown-quicktags-wordpress-plugin/ are
really cool (link completion, etc).

c

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[enniot]

On 2 Dic, 15:47, Jan <yan.bi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I appreciate anything that makes my text close to a real book. Thus,
> rendering _italics_ in italics and *bold* in bold would be nice.

Agree

> But multiple font sizes, or polychrome behaviors won't be of any help
> for me, except perhaps a dimmed color for things that are out of the
> text flow, such as //notes.
>
> Jan

I think multiple font sizes is a good idea, like I see in those
pictures,
section, comments, are welcome to me.
Like said here

> On Dec 1, 6:10 pm, josip <broj...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Don't know yet. It is all open for a discussion. The most basic idea I
> > am playing with right now is allowing // inline comments (presented
> > with dimmed color and maybe italicized) and ## headlines (dimmed and
> > bigger??) and not much more. Just to test if engine is viable enough
> > (I intend to implement my own text coloring algorithms). If it will
> > work ok (latency problems), then there are many possibilities:
> > allowing users to bind jump masks to specific color&format for example
> > - one would be able to highlight all sentences longer than x words ...
> > or all "" quoted parts ... Or visually indent the > paragraphs (or
> > just those starting with a tab for that matter). And stuff like
> > that ... :)

+1 :)

> > As for the custom colors: wm is still monochrome 2 color app. You can
> > somehow cheat this with new color controls in 2.0 ... but I think that
> > new "totally foreign" colors shouldn't be allowed. Or should they?
> > i.

IMHO they should not be allowed.

My 2 cents.

[josip]

I do not intend to hide *, _ and other markup elements.
On Mac side I like Bean editor most, but haven't seen many. Which one
is the one like wm?
i.

On Dec 3, 6:10 pm, Chris Lott <ch...@chrislott.org> wrote:
> I personally prefer that elements which reflect their formatting
> literally still retain their markup as well-- so turning the *bold
> text* bold is good, but hiding the * marks not so much.
>
> I'm partially switching to Mac. In all honesty, the single program I
> can't live without is WM. I've been browsing similar programs on the
> Mac, and while some are OK (and at least one seems like a direct copy
> of WM in many ways), none of them provide the whole package.
>
> Have to admit that I like some of the Markdown shortcuts in other
> programs though, such as Textmate. And, related, some of the features
> in this little project:http://brettterpstra.com/markdown-quicktags-wordpress-plugin/are
> really cool (link completion, etc).
>
> c
>

[samokhov]

There's a lot of MacOS links at the Scrivener site.
http://literatureandlatte.com/links.php

[Asher]

I really like the idea of keeping the markup elements and just marking
them up and making it look pretty. =)

[Per Lindh]

As a coder, I strongly believe that "foreign" colors should be
allowed, and that most markdown elements should be colorable.

Just compare the productivity gained from a code editor with syntax
highlighting, compared to one without. With markdown's many structured
text options - lists, headings, images, links, references - it would
significantly increase productivity to have a syntax highlighting
mechanism that in a non-intrusive way assists in making the text more
readable without loosing the monochrome "feel" of WM - even if the 2
color dogma is dropped. It's all a matter of finding a nice,
monochromeish color scheme...

[samokhov]

I think code syntax highlighting is a somewhat different kettle of fish. You don't get so much stuff that you need to discern at a glance in creative writing, especially if we talk drafting/rewriting, not proofreading and other nitpicking.

For instance, lists and headings are kinda visible as they are, headers might use bigger font size, and most of the stuff like comments can really just be dimmed to get out of the text's way.

Then again, references or links or, say, todos should be immediately visible. Besides, all I said above was rather for argument's sake, because I guess you're right about "monochromeish color scheme". There's no downside to that -- unless it slows WM down.

[fletcher]

Not that I totally disagree with the idea... But by doing this, aren't
we getting closer to what any other word processor is doing, a kind of
WYSIWYG editor ?

If you go ahead, please make sure that some of us may still have the
choice to stay with plain colours and basic unformatted text... which
is why, in the first place, Write Monkey is so successful.

[Chris Lott]

Has anyone in this thread ever seen a text editor in which plain
colors and unformatted text were anything BUT options? I use
WriteMonkey for as many of my writing tasks as I can, many of which
involve extensive lists and links and sections in markdown-- as long
as performance isn't substantially reduced, I don't see a downside to
having better options for making work in Markdown mode more efficient,
which is something enhanced options for syntax would be great for.

On the other hand, there are many other things I'd rather see first,
many rather mundane: fix the spell checker to deal with Markdown, make
link highlighting/activation more robust, etc etc etc.

c

[josip]

I must agree. It is tempting, I considered more extensive approach, but for now I will only implement inline notes feature. // paragraphs will be dimmed & excluded from export, print and statistics. There will be option to purge all notes (move them to repository).
i.

[samokhov]

What about custom masks? Will those have some checkmarks to be excluded from export/stats?

Purging notes is a great idea!

[josip]

Probably yes, but not for 2.0 final. It is feature complete.
i.

[martin.c...@gmail.com]

For me the lack of basic syntax highlighting for Markdown is the only missing feature that prevents WM from being my primary text editor. I thoroughly appreciate WM eliminating the distracting interface that accompanies many editors. However, in a structured text (with sections, lists, etc.), having subtle but visible delineations would dramatically improve my ability to orient myself in the flow of my writing. Endless blocks of identical text are perfect for novel/creative writing, but are less helpful when extensive markdown syntax is scattered throughout and hard to distinguish.

[Kensai]

I think it could easily be repurposed to help out with novel writing
as well, so getting something other than comments up and running
withing the syntax highlighting engine is something I'm looking
forward to as well.