GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 518195
Syntax Highlighting fails update on long documents when making or deleting a line
Last modified: 2008-12-14 19:07:45 UTC
Please describe the problem: in the latest CVS version of Bluefish (calling itself version 1.1.6) the Syntax highlighting seems to fail on any document that is larger than the screen and has to scroll, if line 1-4 (depending on the file ?size?) is not visible from the place you are making a new line (pressing enter), or deleting a line, then the Syntax Highlighting fails and you get boring black text. This happens to me in CSS and PHP files, however oddly in PHP files I have noticed if I have "quoted" HTML the HTML code gets HTML highlighting (which would normally just be green inside of the ""s) and everything else is normal font-weight black text. Steps to reproduce: 1. Create a new file 2. Start writing code (PHP in my case) 3. Set the proper highlighting mode (PHP) 4. make carriage returns until the top 1-4 lines scrolls up the screen out of sight 5. alternately just open a really big file you already have and scroll down and press enter. Actual results: When the view port has to scroll down and Line 1-4 (somewhere in there depending on the file) goes out of sight, Syntax highlighting turns off. until you press F5 to refresh highlighting Expected results: I would expect Syntax Highlighting to not need to be refreshed on every carriage return, or line deletion. (basically I expected it to work the same way Bluefish 1.0.x series worked, and Gedit and all the others in regard to Syntax highlighting.) Does this happen every time? Yes Other information: a Lot of the new changes in CVS are great, but the new Syntax highlighting is slow compared to the 1.0.x series and it has this (at I consider it to be) fatal bug with highlighting turning off on files larger than your monitor. (not to mention the highlighting being slower than the 1.0.x series in general. if it wasn't for this fatal flaw I would be using 1.1.6 all the time. it has much wanted features... perhaps the new Syntax highlighting method could be moved to the next release cycle and the old syntax highlighting code could be used to release a stable 1.2, and start work on the 1.3.x series where the new syntax highlighting engine can be refined, and sped up, and fixed on large files. I'm not sure what else would be holding up the CVS, it seems to work great other than that issue. is Bluefish Development dead right now?
the issue is that the highlighting engine unly updates all text in the viewable area. so if the start tag <?php is outside the viewable area the visible text is not considered php anymore. I agree the highlighting engine is the major bottleneck to create a 2.0 release. Unfortunately the author of the engine has little time....
is it possible to retrofit the CVS with the old highlighting engine, make a beta, or 1.2 stable release or something of that sort, and push the new highlighting engine forward further until the author has time to finish it, or someone else steps up to plate? I imagine some of my favorite new features are part of this very same highlighting engine, but the new directory view and some other things are not, it would still be a nice release. even without collapsible sections and start/end highlighting (the start/end highlighting is probably my favorite new feature, helps me especially with debugging) it would be a decent release.
several changes in current cvs address this issue. it's not bugfree yet but it is quite an improvement
This appears to be fixed with the new highlighting engine in current SVN TRUNK. Please reopen the bug if you can reproduce it with current SVN.