[MonoDevelop] Scintilla over GtkSourceView

[Mike Krueger]

Hi

>(Todd, please approve this to the list...)
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>Yes, I realize that we will have to abstract many things. Basically, there are two paths we take for different issues:
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>1) Push it back to gtksourceview
>I want to do this for features that you would see in any editor. Like smart indenting, Folding strategies, highlighters, markers, etc. GtkSourceVIew can allow us to provide the data we need. For items like folding, this gives you guys 100% freedom in the editor -- we wont have to backport to MD. For items like extra markers, we have to be careful to provide a platform neutral binding.
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Fortuntately extra markers are no current issue we'll may have it in the 
future.

>2) Keep it in MD
>A great example here is code templates. Also, code generation goes here too. We have to implement these inside c# because they cannot be generalized to the C widget. To maintain portability, it is critical that we use implementation neutral code. That means no references to IDocument, for example; because our binding will not have that. I would be happy to work with you guys to make an API that allows us to easily swap in either impl.
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I'll be looking over the stuff you're doing and then I'm sure that we 
can work something out. It would be nice if the language backends could 
be ported easily between SD and MD.

>On linux, we are clearly going with sourceview. From the beta version, it feels much more natural than the custom buffer. I cannot begin to list the ways in which this is true. Lets take the small things -- the syntax highlighting in gedit and MD is the same. This is great, because i love gedit, and it helps me as a user to not have a weird switch between the two impls. Secondly, I am able to use the middle mouse button to copy and paste text via the X server. This is important to many old-school developers.
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Thats one reason for me which convinced me that this is a good way ... I 
only want to point out that the wrapper used in MD is mighty enough to 
support all functionality for current usage and
further extension.

>For this reason, it is pretty critical that we allow the editor to be pluggable. Not so much so that a person can switch in VIM at will, but so that we can share code MD <-> SD.
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>I would note that the code is actually getting smaller by making the editor wrapper.
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Maybe because the editor wrapper is smaller than the whole editor 
implemented in C# itself ? I'm looking forward for your work and I'm 
sure it will be nice :) ... I only want to help you
to make a really good linux IDE. I think that MD might have the power to 
become the dominant IDE for the linux 'market' ... when it gets a good 
C/C++ binding.
And with some amount of work it could stand against Visual Studio.NET 
and its successors.

btw. how many people are currently working on MD ?

Regards
Mike