Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

I've seen several questions on mailing lists about (1) how to use a web service in a Java application and (2) how to create a NetBeans module that uses a web service. Both in relation to (the forthcoming) NetBeans IDE 6.0, running on JDK 6. The two scenarios are related, the second is an extension of the first. So let's go through the whole process. At the end, we'll have a new menu in the IDE which, when you click it, shows a "thought for the day" from this on-line web...

When dealing with Groovy maps, and named parameters, I wanted the parameters to have a distinct color: However, this is a bit tricky. The parameters occur within strings. So somehow you need to get within a string, identify a parameter, and then give the parameter a specific color. But this is how my string is defined: TOKEN:STRING: ( "\\"" [\^ "\\n" "\\r"] \* "\\"") So, how am I able to find the parameter within the above declaration? By rewriting it so that...

Still working on Groovy support, one new feature lets you type a code snippet in a wizard, like this: As you can see, my Schliemann syntax coloring also works in the JEditorPane. And then when you finish the wizard, you have a new module that will install your new snippet in the Groovy palette: Plus, you can then distribute the snippet, since its now provided by a module.

This is going to be one of those 'thinking out loud' blog entries, written in notepad as the thoughts occur (not unlike James Joyce, but then different) and then pasted into my blog. (Only that way does it make sense, in the sense of it being helpful, it won't be watered down or summarized, but really as things happen.) Basically, fundamentally, what I want to get done, finally, absolutely, and completely, is the Groovy tokens. Without that, no grammar rules and therefore no...

First, a thousand words: So, here, apart from some obvious syntax coloring, there are two other interesting things going on. First, there's a code fold for classes: And also for the body of classes: I found that it is easier to create code folds before creating syntax colors. Syntax coloring can be extremely tricky, because the order in which you define TOKEN declarations is important. When the IDE parses the NBS file, it reads from top to bottom and so if the text in the...

I've come to believe that by far the most important feature of an editor is its syntax coloring. Forget all the rest, even code completion—the ability to distinguish one piece of syntax from another is the fundamental demand that an editor should fulfil. Yesterday we made some progress in providing this for Groovy. At least, I discussed the main principles and applied them to the import statement and the Groovy keywords. We started with the Java NBS file and began whittling...

I thought I'd put down on 'paper' the things I've been looking at in relation to Groovy and providing an editor for it. By 'editor' I mean primarily 'syntax coloring', 'code folding', 'code completion', and 'navigator support'. Secondarily I mean 'run' functionality and 'console integration'. The key to everything in the primary section in relation to NetBeans is Schliemann. Fortunately, a Schliemann file for Java already exists (here), so since Groovy is closely related to...

If you study Tim's Wicket tag parser, which underlies the navigator mentioned in yesterday's blog entry, then you'll find it's not very hard to adapt it to your own purposes. For example, here's the same parser in action, but slightly modified. Here, instead of looking for Wicket tags, it looks for all words in the document and then prints them to the navigator: Why might this be useful? Well, it's now a small step to a spell checker. The user would specify a file containing...