KDE/kdevelop/languages/cpp

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 07.12.07 14:30:35, David Nolden wrote:
> On Friday 07 December 2007 14:07:06 Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > I'm not sure I understand everything there. I had thought of a simple
> > color dialog where you can just add colors to a list, which would get
> > used for variable highlighting.
> >
> > I'm not sure complete auto-computing colors works, Matthew Woehlke or
> > Fredrik Hoeglund would be the ones to ask about that.
> >
> > Also having too many colors might pose a usability problem as well, i.e.
> > making the code itself harder readable. I haven't tested your changes,
> > so this is just me thinking out loud.
> 
> I think letting the user pick each color would be configuration overkill.

Depends, on how many different colors there would be :) As I said I
don't think having a separate color for each variable in the current
file makes the code more readable. But I do agree that this will most
probably be overkill...

> The only important thing about the colors is that they are
> distinguishable, that's why they span over the whole range of possible
> colors. What would make sense would be an option to choose how many
> different colors there should be(also changing the distance of the
> colors), maybe their brightness/saturation, and whether the
> background-color should also be changed for the highlighting.

IMHO that last one is not a good idea. Changing the background color for
all those variables to something different than the rest of the file
creates too much "highlighting" and gets in the way when trying to read
the code. Rather try to find colors that contrast with the current
background to a certain amount. (IIRC kdeui has a function which returns
the contrast between two colors).

That reminds me: Did you look at how Eclipse does this? They only
highlight the usages of the current variable (or last one you had the
cursor on). IMHO that makes more sense as it doesn't produce as much
color-clutter, but still allows to easily see where a variable is used.

Andreas

-- 
You'll feel much better once you've given up hope.