[NETBEANS-1651] Adding syntax highlighing and code completion of different languages inside strings (C/C++)

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: Next
• Component/s: cnd - Editor, editor - Other
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Christian Lenz
• Created: 09/Nov/18 14:37
• Updated: 14/Nov/18 12:57

Description

As of today, we can have a lot of languages inside strings like SQL or JS or HTML. If we have to add such code inside strings in C++, it is really hard to "debug" or to figure out what you have forgotton and not really readable because it is still a string.

For this, NetBeans has embedded languages support and to not say I want exact this language inside a string, which doesn't make sense, because In C++ I can have HTML, XML, JS, SQL and whatever inside of a string, I should change it via a hint inside of the editor.

So when I have a java file with code like this:

string testSQL = "SELECT * FROM"; // Database access

I would expect, that the code looks like a normal string, but when I click inside the string, I should get a hint where I can "Choose embedded language". After running this hint, a very small not disturbing dialog (Like the insert code dialog from java) should come up and should show me all supported languages like SQL, C/C++, Java, HTML, XML, CSS, JS, Regex, etc.

This is a dynamic approach because setting it to a default language is not right. In the next line maybe you have this code:

string myWhatever = "<h3>Nice</h3>"; // To render HTML ins a gui or smth like that

And it should not look like SQL, it should still looks like a string, until I want to change it to HTML.

This is the same approach as IntelliJ does and it works very well: https://d3nmt5vlzunoa1.cloudfront.net/c/c++storm/files/2018/09/DQL_inject.gif

Maybe not every language makes sense there and an option for that is needed as well but for an MVP all is ok. IMHO.

I don't know whether C makes sense but C++.