Which text editors REALLY support D?

Don nospam at nospam.com.au
Tue Jul 22 03:01:47 PDT 2008


Bill Baxter wrote:
> Don wrote:
> 
>>> I use JEdit a lot.  It's Java-based, but it code-highlights for D and 
>>> the indentation isn't that bad.  It could be better, but it's free, 
>>> works, and it's certainly smaller than the Eclipse footprint (much 
>>> less the Eclipse+Descent footprint!)
>>
>> Does it lex correctly?
>> Graying out nested comments is the #1 thing I want in a text editor. 
>> I'm appalled that so few of the editors advertised as being for D can 
>> actually satisfy such a trivial requirement.
> 
> I reckon most D modes that exist were created by making minor tweaks
> to existing C++ modes, and C++ doesn't have nested comments so the
> infrastructure isn't there.  It was one of the harder things to figure
> out how to get working with the emacs D mode.

I can well believe that. It'd be trivial for a text editor programmer, 
though.
It's just my opinion that any C++ or Java editor works reasonably well 
for D, without any modification. A different keyword list doesn't help much.
You only get an improvement once you have support for nested comments 
and D strings.

So we have levels of support:
1. C++/Java editor
2. D lexing support (nested comments, strings)
3. Code completion.
4. Full-blown IDE with various fancy stuff (AFAIK only Descent has 
reached level 4).

Would be nice to get the major editors at least to level 2.


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