Thursday January 26, 2006
Thursday January 26, 2006
Origami and NetBeans IDE 5.0
Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. You can do wonderful things with origami. The good thing is, you don't need to be Japanese. And, with NetBeans IDE 5.0, you don't even need paper. Look at the first screenshot below: you see something you'll only have seen in real life if you've worked through the NetBeans Manifest File Syntax Highlighting Module Tutorial. However, you also see... a really big brackety thing on the left side, between the left sidebar and the start of the lines of text:
Now, when I click on the "-" icon at the top of the big brackety thing (which is called a "code fold"), the text disappears inside the code fold and you only see its description ("Big Fat Manifest File Fold"):
Now, before you start thinking: "What's the point of this overly convoluted explanation of what is nothing more than a code fold?", look in the Projects window in the screenshots above. Highlighted, you see the files that you need to create to set up your own code folds. So, the point of this blog entry is not to tell you what a code fold is. The point of this blog entry is to tell you that soon you will be able to create plug-in modules that include code fold support. When, for example, you create an editor for a new file type, you'll not only be able to add syntax highlighting and multiview editors, but you'll also be able to add code folds (and, later, code completion). There are still a few kinks in the code, so I'm not making it available in my Update Center yet and I'm not working on a tutorial for this stuff yet either, but once the code has been smoothed out, you too will be able to practice the ancient Japanese art of paper folding in NetBeans IDE 5.0.
Thanks to Marek Fukala for working on the sample.
Jan 26 2006, 08:48:18 AM PST Permalink
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