On Jun 18, 2008, at 12:59 AM, Will Robertson wrote:
On 18/06/2008, at 12:51 AM, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:
- .sty files are claimed by the TeX grammar (LaTeX would be better)
IIRC, sty files often don't look too good on the LaTeX syntax coloring, but perhaps I am misremembering. Do you write sty files, and in that case would you rather have LaTeX as the grammar for them?
Tricky question. Neither is particularly appropriate, since they are designed for user-level documents; there ought to be a "LaTeX code" grammar to be used for .sty, .cls, and (more importantly) .dtx files.
The most glaring example need for this I could see is that in neither the TeX nor LaTeX grammar should "@" count as a control sequence letter, but it should in a LaTeX code grammar. E.g., a control sequence like @ifnextchar should be highlighted in a .sty/.cls/.dtx file but not in a .tex or .ltx file unless between \makeatletter...\makeatother.
In other respects, a LaTeX code grammar should, roughly speaking, be a superset of the TeX and LaTeX grammars. (If the LaTeX grammar is a superset of the TeX grammar already, then the LaTeX grammar is the right choice -- sorry, I haven't compared the two in any detail yet!)
Correct, the LaTeX bundle inherits the TeX grammar. The reason they are different is to allow for things like ConTeXt.
Since LaTeX package authoring is rather a niche audience, I'm not at all surprised that this issue hasn't come up before and it's certainly not essential to add all these sorts of features. Your question above just needed a longer answer than "yes" or "no" :)
You are correct, there does need to be a separate grammar for code files, extending the LaTeX bundle. It's simply a question of who is going to write it. I personally don't write such files, so I never had any interest in doing something like that. I would be happy to help anyone who wants to undertake the task however.
And yeah, it sounds like it should be extending the LaTeX grammar. Any volunteers?
Cheers, Will
Haris Skiadas Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Hanover College