[MonoDevelop] PHP Language Bindings

Baris Cicek baris at teamforce.name.tr
Sun Sep 17 07:29:40 EDT 2006


Hi; 

I'm working on PHP Language Bindings for MD. To make it useful enough
for PHP developers, major features for this binding should be command
completion and compiler integration. But before that some other MD
editor enhancements/addition might also necessary. I just wanted to ask
if those should go into Add-in part or the core part of the editor. Some
of them are:

* Line wrapping: Currently MD does not have option to switch line
wrapping on and off. From my discussion on IRC some stated that for
developing C# it's not recommented to line wrap. But for PHP codes you
ran into long lines very often, speciallyf or SQL queries. 

For that reason, line wrapping is a major UI enhancement for PHP codes.
I know that it's trivial to implement, because of text editor widget
already supports that. But should that go into MD or Add-in? 

* Replace in selection: PHP development needs lots of code copying and
pasting, and mostly it's very easy to find/replace in selection.
Currently MD find and replace dialog lacking "Look in selection". I'm
not quite sure if it's possible to add that into Find/Replace dialog
with Add-in but I also think that this feature might be usefule for C#
coding. I remember needed that in past as well. So should it be
necessary for Core or should go into Add-in? 

* Tips for bracket start: For this I'm not sure if it's a trivial thing
and might need upstream changes for text editor widget, but as PHP Codes
might go very long, it's easy to lost track of what closing brackets
closes. Like, if you're closing a function, on the closing bracket it
would be really helpful to show (on the top of editor) starting line of
that block. (ie. you started a function foo (bar) { ... and on closing
bracket of that function, not only it highlight the openning bracket,
but also showing "function foo (bar..)" on top of the editor. (Zend PHP
IDE has such a feature for example). That can also be useful for C#
coding and other languages as well. or can it? Is that *only* useful for
PHP?

* Directory tree: Browsing the directories in MD is not very efficient.
You can't point the sub directory, without changing the current
directory. A directory tree in new nautilus list view would be really
helpful, to open sub directories in threaded view and choosing files
from there. That might even reported as bug, have to admit that I
haven't checked it. C# codes might need it, but big PHP projects
definately need that. Because you mostly need to work with parallel in
one directory you keep HTML Templates, and in one directory you keep
sctipts, and you need to switch between them very often. For that reason
do you think that it's just a PHP necessity or should go into Core? 

Currently PHP language binding is very early  beta. It understands .php
extension and sample new files. I'm trying code completion part but
hasn't come with something very useful. Seems like not that trivial to
implement for a newbie like me. But I believe I'm having some progress. 

But those editor enhancements would make experinence for PHP codes even
better. You can live w/o command completion sometimes but, say, without
line wrapping you really think twice to use MD as PHP IDE. That's why I
wanted to ask if those things should go into Add-in or the Core, I'll
try to add those functionalities to where they are necessary. 


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