[Lazarus] Code outline feature of the IDE

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2017, Werner Pamler via Lazarus wrote:

> The new outline feature of the IDE in Laz 1.8 and trunk is extremely helpful 
> in locating code block inconsistencies. I cannot imagine how I could have 
> lived without it in older versions.
>
> In my opinion, however, it is not always working correctly:
>
> A "for" loop with a "begin"/"end" block ("for ... do begin end;") is a 
> logical entity of the code; there is only a single semicolon which terminates 
> this sequence. Therefore I'd expect all four keywords to be painted in the 
> same color, no matter of how the code is formatted.
>
> The IDE behaves differently, however. Look at screenshot "orig.png" which is 
> taken from the current LCLtranslator.pas of trunk and essentially shows a 
> "for" loop with a "begin"/"end" block. However, the author of this unit likes 
> to put the "begin" into a new line and to indent it with respect to its "for" 
> parent. Note that the IDE now switches color - "for...do" and "begin"/"end" 
> are colored differently. - I think this is wrong
>
> This changes if the indentation of "begin" is modified to match that of "for" 
> (screenshot "modif-1.png"), or if "begin" is kept in the same line as "for" 
> (screenshot "modif-2.png").  Now all three keywords are colored equally. - I 
> think this is correct.
>
> How can it be that the logical relation between keywords depends on the way 
> of writing? Is this a bug? Or is it just that my understanding of the Pascal 
> block concept is wrong?

Interestingly, I had a discussion recently with one of the authors of this
functionality (Pascal Riekenberg). He had remarks about exactly this point. 
He uses the C style of putting "begin" at the end of the for/if/while line, 
while I use the Object Pascal style of putting begin on a separate line.


I suppose that as a result of this discussion, the behaviour may still be
fine-tuned.

Michael.