http://davedolan.com/blog/2007/11/26/building-a-syntax-highlighter-part-ii/ Website not included. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:19:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 http://davedolan.com/blog/2007/11/26/building-a-syntax-highlighter-part-ii/#comment-12145 Dave Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:18:08 +0000 http://davedolan.com/blog/2007/11/26/building-a-syntax-highlighter-part-ii/#comment-12145 Yeah I've looked at antlr. The problem is that when you specify a grammar in antlr it's not just a language independent grammar. You actually embed stuff from the code in it. Add the semantic actions on top of that, and well, it's still not very readable to anyone but you. I do think it's a great idea though... The good news is we've already built a tree builder and actually have the thing to generate the strongly typed tree already assembled. It's just awaiting a few of my lazy moments to add the rest of the things before it goes out to the world. I like the idea of talking about a language ONLY as a grammar... and in Antlr, you can't really do that (Antlr is a great tool, just I'm a little partial to gold.) Yeah I’ve looked at antlr. The problem is that when you specify a grammar in antlr it’s not just a language independent grammar. You actually embed stuff from the code in it. Add the semantic actions on top of that, and well, it’s still not very readable to anyone but you. I do think it’s a great idea though… The good news is we’ve already built a tree builder and actually have the thing to generate the strongly typed tree already assembled. It’s just awaiting a few of my lazy moments to add the rest of the things before it goes out to the world. I like the idea of talking about a language ONLY as a grammar… and in Antlr, you can’t really do that (Antlr is a great tool, just I’m a little partial to gold.)

]]> http://davedolan.com/blog/2007/11/26/building-a-syntax-highlighter-part-ii/#comment-12123 Mark Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:02:02 +0000 http://davedolan.com/blog/2007/11/26/building-a-syntax-highlighter-part-ii/#comment-12123 Interesting read. I evaluated Gold for use in my project and I opted to not use it. I\'m working in plain C and the \'engine templates\' would have me writing a whole lot of code I don\'t want to. In other words, I don\'t want to write the actual parsing code, I just want to add code to the grammar file for semantic actions. I imagine the situation is different in C# as I\'m sure someone has implemented a proper framework or is that what you\'re doing? Have you looked into Antlr? It supports C# as a target and provides a lot more functionality (tree building) than Gold. Regards. Interesting read. I evaluated Gold for use in my project and I opted to not use it. I\’m working in plain C and the \’engine templates\’ would have me writing a whole lot of code I don\’t want to. In other words, I don\’t want to write the actual parsing code, I just want to add code to the grammar file for semantic actions. I imagine the situation is different in C# as I\’m sure someone has implemented a proper framework or is that what you\’re doing? Have you looked into Antlr? It supports C# as a target and provides a lot more functionality (tree building) than Gold. Regards.

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