Generic IDE with visual features - has this been done before?

[Denaes]

Im thinking this might make a good .Net 2.0 project.

Im programming a lot in Progress, which has its own IDE... which is pretty awful.

Im looking for a basic IDE with the most basic features: find, replace, tabbed formatting (really being spaces), keyword highlighting, line numbers.

Thats all basic stuff that I could find in many freeware or low priced-ware mini IDEs.

Other things Im looking for:

Commentable IDE Code - basically every language has a way to comment a line. So you can put a comment line in and include a command for the IDE. Sort of similar to how you insert Javascript into HTML comments.

so you could do this:

//RegionBegin: "Variables"
<code within, presumably variables>
//RegionEnd: "Variables"

Which wont throw any errors in any compiler since theyre commented out lines - heck theyll still be helpful comments in the code as well.

doing this I would like to add a few features that would help me in Progress & PHP: Code Regions and Include Regions (basically displays what is in another text file)

I would want to be able to designate many things within a settings file for each language such as what opens/closes a Comment (VB it would be & the end of a line).

It doesnt seem terribly hard. Maybe some sort of code completion from the list of keywords as an afterthought.

Definately ways to help differentiate a loop/if...then statement in shading or something like that.

 

[Denaes]

Ill take that as a no. No interest and no existing application that exsits like that that anyone would know.

 

[snarfblam]

Are you looking for a code editor or an IDE? There are lots of free code editors with syntax hilighting for dozens of languages. As far as regions and intellisense/autocomplete, that is far less common.

SharpDevelop allows you to set up your own syntax hilighting (but setting it up hurts my head). I dont know if you will be able to use regions with anything besides VB and C#.

 

[Denaes]

Are you looking for a code editor or an IDE?

Well I think at the point where you have all of those features its an IDE. Maybe there is a difference I dont know of, but Ive always thought of something like notepad like a code editor and something that combines developer tools to be an IDE.

There are lots of free code editors with syntax hilighting for dozens of languages. As far as regions and intellisense/autocomplete, that is far less common.

Yeah, thats why I asked if anyone knew of one - my Google searches were fruitless.

SharpDevelop allows you to set up your own syntax hilighting (but setting it up hurts my head). I dont know if you will be able to use regions with anything besides VB and C#.

oh, you can use regions with any language. You just need to have tags to mark them and the IDE/Code Window has to be able to read the tags.

Thats why you put commands into commented out lines - itll still mark where a region starts/ends in any code editor window and in a "code region enabled" window it would fold your code.

Any idea if any IDE/Text editors have an option for displaying what is in an Include file? Id love to have an include line - then have what the included code is to be showin in the display as a region.

But thats mainly because working with included files is the worst professional way for a team to work that I can think of and even more annoying when you have to check the includes out of SourceSafe to even see what is in them.

 

[Denaes]

I found that Eclipse has some plugins that do the Regions. Im not sure about the includes though. Im sure there is something.

Thats a common PHP/Javascript thing. I dont know if PHP/JS programmers are annoyed by it, but I am. Then again they may have a more organized development team

 

[iebidan]

Most free IDEs are C# oriented, I dont think youll be able to find an IDE for Progress with the intellisense stuff like VS .NET, remember that VS .NET has a huge team working in it, while the other IDEs are just a school project or dont have the team VS .NET has.
I think you will need to code your own plug ins, as for me Im not interested in writting a plug in that I will never use, C# and SQL Server are what I use, from time to time (very very few times) Oracle.
But if I find something in the internet I will let you know, good luck

 

[Denaes]

OK, I ditched Eclipse soon.

All the code folding was specifically written for Java and you couldnt customize it.

You had to write a whole plugin with logic statements of the language to get it to work with a langauge

I found this nice little guy called: CodeBrowser. It has code folding and code linking and its easy to add a language on. The longest part was copying over the index of Progresses 800 key terms, many of which had shortcut key terms (!?) and having to edit out the description of them.

Just as a comparison, VB6 had a ton of keywords. VB.net & C# (ie, .net) has something like 50. Because it has a framework of classes rather than individual keywords.

 

[Denaes]

Most free IDEs are C# oriented,

huh?

Most free IDEs are C, HTML, Java, php, Assembly, etc. They also often have a file(s) to let you work with other languages.

I think Ive seen like 2 that are C# oriented... one was #Develop (VB & C#) and the other was a little cheapo that I hadnt heard of before.

The one Im using has code highlighting for C# and vb.net as well as association for Visual Studio Projects.

Funny, all this and I cant figure out how to close a tab/window without closing the application

 

[iebidan]

Im talking about .NET free IDEs I dont know about the others, actually at this moment I dont have to worry about other languages besides C# and SQL, if one day I need to worry about VB or C or Java or anything I will do it, so far Ive enough stuff going on with C#