KDE/kdevelop/languages/cpp

[Jens Dagerbo]

On 12/7/07, David Nolden <zwabel at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 07 December 2007 15:13:05 Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > 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
>
> I haven't looked at eclipse about that, but that's exactly what the use
> highlighter plugin does(highlight specially what's under the cursor).
>
> The color-clutter isn't that bad, because only local variables are
> highlighted. Imo that highlighting does make sense, it makes the code more
> readable. I like it, and not just because I've written it, in the beginning
> it was just an experiment. :) The important thing is just that the colors are
> not too disturbing, that's why they are hand chosen.
>

It's a bit hard to figure out from your description (I guess I should
try it out tonight) but if you are saying that every local variable
has a different background color, then I definitely think that is too
much "noise".

IMHO:
A single specific foreground color for all local variables would be
nice (and also for member variables and globals, but using different
colors) and
A single background color for the selected variable would be extremely nice!

I think that would strike a nice balance between "noise" and
information. I certainly don't need different colors to distinguish
variables such as "name" and "timeout" in a local context, the names
are more than enough for that. But easily locating all occurrances of
a specific variable by selecting is very very useful.

// jens