MVBASIC++ Free Notepad++ syntax highlighting for MV programs

[Tony Gravagno]

I just posted the following in the LinkedIn Pick Users Group. Figured I should post here too.

With inspiration and blessing from Remington Richards, I forked his D3 User-Defined Language project (see recent thread at LinkedIn) and extended it for other MV platforms. Full documentation and screenshots are provided. I already have QM and Universe definitions and need to standardize them with everything learned in this recent round with D3.

As FOSS this will not be productized and there will be no upsell. We will continue on this only as time permits. Anyone is welcome to use this, post Issues at Github for any kind of change, and contribute knowledge or code.

My hope is that now that Notepad++ is more sophisticated than it used to be that we'll be able to thrash this into a tool that interfaces with MV in some interesting ways. As it is now, anyone familiar with AccuTerm, wIntegrate, or AnzioWin scripting can get those emulators to launch this editor and then save the updated code back into their BP file. Beyond this we can add an interface without the specific emulators for things like version control and item comparison.

There is no intent to get this to compete with more sophisticated offerings, in or out of PickLand. Notepad++ just isn't that good. But I think somewhere between what we have now (wED?) and tools like Visual Studio, Atom, IntelliJ, Eclipse (including XLr8 from U2Logic), Netbeans, etc, that there is plenty of room for better tools which might appeal to newcomers to the platform.

Will some people prefer Sublime or Atom or VSCode for this kind of thing? Sure, someone else can do that too. There's no reason to limit our FOSS options in this industry.

Enjoy!
https://github.com/TonyGravagno/MVBASIC-plus-plus

[MAV]

Interesting job. I'm doing something similar for VSCode. For now, it is the editor that I like, after making a comparison with Atom, Sublime, Notepad++  and others less known. For now I use VSCode for many things (HTML editing, Markdown, etc) and I want to use it as the main editor for MV environments. My idea is to make a small executable that can be called from a VSCode task to read an MV program and store it in a temporary folder while editing. At the end the edited file would be "returned" to the MV.

Marcos Alonso Vega

[Symeon Breen]

+1 for VSCode much better than notepad++ IMO  :)

On 18 July 2017 at 11:04, MAV <alon...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Interesting job. I'm doing something similar for VSCode. For now, it is the editor that I like, after making a comparison with Atom, Sublime, Notepad++  and others less known. For now I use VSCode for many things (HTML editing, Markdown, etc) and I want to use it as the main editor for MV environments. My idea is to make a small executable that can be called from a VSCode task to read an MV program and store it in a temporary folder while editing. At the end the edited file would be "returned" to the MV.

Marcos Alonso Vega

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[KOSDAY SOLUTIONS]

In the future we will contribute the possibility to read, write and compile directly in hash files, opening an MV file browser and making connections to the database on demand (only for these operations).

Pedro

[Bill Crowell]

Has anyone looked at RedaktorIDE?  It is an editor for QM/BASIC based upon CodeMirror. It performs syntax highlighting and code formatting inside the browser.

The reason for building it was to enable developers to edit code on a cloud server. It is intended to replace WED for my daily usage. Because Redaktor is JavaScript, it runs across platforms.

Previous attempts to use Sublime, Notepad++ and scores of others met in failure.

Redaktor presently does not have support for processing normal items with mark characters, but it is in the pipeline.

The browser is the universal interface.

[Tony Gravagno]

As expected, some of our respected colleagues "get" this and others don't.

Marcos and Symeon - you get it and you just like other IDEs. That's great. I like VS Code too and use it for other purposes. It's a real IDE, unlike Notepad++ which is just an extended text editor. I look forward to contributing to your effort if you publish as FOSS.

Pedro - you get it and I look forward to your FOSS collaboration.

Bill - you don't get it. This wasn't intended to be competitive, commercial, a discussion about the relative merits of Notepad++, or an invitation for your commercial offering. Some might recognize the irony of my criticism of that. At some point I realized I was doing exactly that with a couple of my offerings, recognized the lack of taste, and stopped doing it. Hey, we learn, we change, we move on.

This was not an attempt to promote Notepad++ as a suitable alternative to serious tools. I really don't care about Notepad++. I use Notepad++ as a replacement for Notepad - never for real development. I do encourage people to use VS Code, Eclipse, or RedaktorIDE when they're looking for that next step up.

What this IS, is that someone was generous enough to start a new FOSS project and I picked up on it and contributed back. I respect that some guy took the time to offer some FOSS for people who DO like Notepad++ and for people who DO like to use something lighter than a full IDE and the bewildering variety of plugins and config settings for some or all development. This is just an offering, just cuz, not a "statement" about preference or about what works best.

This community has gotta stop crapping on alternatives because the world is a very diverse place. The more we try to narrow options the more we narrow down this entire industry. The rest of the world thrives on diversity, choice, extensibility, plugins, addons, and FOSS to make it all happen. Our industry in general seems to eschew FOSS, and gravitates toward a MV-only, BASIC-only, DIY, NIH perspective. (Of course that does Not apply to many here.)

As a perfect example, FOSS is so ignored that Kevin dumped the cool http://foss4mv.net/ domain and Glen Bachelor gave up his noble FOSS efforts long ago. We've had https://bitbucket.org/foss4mv/ for a few years now with almost no contributions - and I consider just USING the code a contribution. I didn't publish MVBASIC++ at Bitbucket because I didn't want it to get lost with all of the other cool code there.

Sure, there are alternatives. That's Not what this was about. What I would hope to see, but wouldn't dream of it in this industry, is a number of people coming together in an effort to replace wED in Accuterm, which many of us use all the time. (And that would be just one option for this, not the only one.) That's not a threat to AccuTerm. This is what people do with other platforms in the world. It's a statement in support of a favorite terminal emulator - with acknowlegement that if wED isn't going to go any further then we can thank it for its legacy and pick up where it left off. FYI, wED isn't "built-in" to MV. wED simply uses a client/server interface built over AccuTerm. ANY UI including Notepad++ can do the same with the same fluid exchange of data. That's where I'd like to take this little FOSS project. Just for fun.

So let's start over. Who wants to have some fun?

T

[KOSDAY SOLUTIONS]

Have fun... me too

And also enjoy with VS Code

Pedro