TextPad syntax file (attn: Knob)

[MatthewPeters]

Knob

I finally had a few minutes to browse your Aspect resource site. Great site! There's a lot of useful information there. I'm sure I'll be visiting it again. But what really caught my eye was the section on Textpad.

We use Textpad at our orgainization for all of our HTML and ASP coding. I'd like to start using it for our Aspect code. I downloaded the orginal syntax file and got it working. The link to your revised syntax file was broken as well as the link to the customizations document.

I'd really like to take a look at the customizations document. I'm assuming this document discusses how to compile the .was scripts into .wax exe's. I'm guessing you would just run a dos command thru Textpad's run option? I would greatly appreciate it if you would post a link to this document.

Thanks again for providing online Aspect resources.

Matt

 

[knob]

The link is to the FTP site of the person that I worked on the document and syntax file with, and he's had a couple problems in the past with the DNS for the server, so that's probably why you can't access the files. Luckily, I had copied a draft copy of the Word document to my server as well, so you can access it via

http://www.aspectscripting.com/TextPad_Setup_For_Aspect.doc.jws.doc.

In it, I think we were able to discuss how to replicate just about all of the functionality available in the ASPECT Editor (except for the Tools | Compiler Options menu item). It shows how to call the ASPECT compiler, highlight a command and look it up in the help file, as well as launch the Dialog Editor and a couple other steps.

I believe that this draft document is essentially the final document - the only change that needs to be made to our document since the initial release is adding a # character to the "Other characters in words field" in the Syntax tree item under the ASPECT document class you add in the Preferences dialog. This change enables you to double click on a preprocessor command to highlight the entire word (including the #) prior to clicking on a customized toolbar button that will display that command's discussion in the ASPECT help file (something that can be accomplished by right clicking a command in the ASPECT Editor).

I've also copied the draft syntax file to

http://www.aspectscripting.com/aspect2002.syn.

I'm fairly certain that this is the same version of the file that you would receive by clicking the (currently broken) link. However, I am still doing a little work on this file and will have an updated version sometime soon. Basically, the updated syntax file will have several reserved words that I noticed in the ASPECT help file reserved word discussion that do not appear to actually be current ASPECT commands. I have also added a couple keywords that I missed during my first go at the document.

By the way, how familiar are you with syntax files? The original syntax file I created had commands under one keyword heading, while arguments to those command were under a different keyword, so commands and arguments would have different highlighting in TextPad. However, ASPECT has several keywords that are both commands and arguments depending on the context, so this caused some odd coloration issues. For the time being, I've included all ASPECT commands and arguments in the same keyword for the time being (system variables, predefined global variables, and preprocessor commands are also in their own separate keyword sections), but I'm interested if you know of any solutions for this. TextPad support sent me a suggestion that I have not yet tried, but I don't believe it will quite work for this situation. aspect@aspectscripting.com

http://www.aspectscripting.com

 

[MatthewPeters]

Thanks for the quick response. This is great! Color coded Aspect code. I never knew it was possible.

To answer your question, I really don't know a whole lot about syntax files. My experience is limited to the amount of time I've spent this morning tinkering around with them. I do not know of any solutions but if I run across anything I'll be sure and post it. That would be a nice feature to assign commands and argurments different color codes. But anyway, this (in my opinion) is a vast improvement from the ASPECT editor.

 

[knob]

I definitely agree! I'm glad the other person I worked with happened to see the TextPad discussion on my site, showed me what he had done thus far, and we took it from there. I previously just had a link to the TextPad site and the two syntax files, but hadn't found the time to devote to really customizing TextPad until he got me interested in the project.
aspect@aspectscripting.com

http://www.aspectscripting.com

 

[knob]

FYI, the updated link on my site for the document is

http://www.aspectscripting.com/TextPad4_Setup_For_Aspect_v-1_0.doc

aspect@aspectscripting.com

http://www.aspectscripting.com

 

[knob]

I'm also copying the link to the syntax file below since the original article has the URL mangled:

http://www.aspectscripting.com/aspect2002.syn

aspect@aspectscripting.com

http://www.aspectscripting.com