[Lazarus] "show declaration hints" has more power in it than is really used

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:34:12 +0000
Mark Morgan Lloyd <markMLl.lazarus at telemetry.co.uk> wrote:

> Bernd wrote:
> 
> Much stuff that appeared on a single line, with occasional missing 
> spaces. If it's difficult to write it should be difficult to read. Here 
> endeth the rant :-)
> 
> I wonder if I could ask a question that follows on from Bernd's 
> sentiment. He points out that the IDE will pick up a comment /before/ a 
> declaration, but for getting on for 30 years I've been putting comments 
> immediately /after/ and that includes the positioning of a unit summary. 

Use the < sign at the beginning.

  a=1;
  //< Comment for a
  b=2;
  //< Comment for b

See here
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_IDE_Tools#Comments_shown_in_the_hint


> What's more I've been writing comments where every line is terminated 
> ("Sloane style") rather than having a brace at the start of each comment 
> and one at the end, and I still favour (* *) because of years spent 
> using Modula-2.

All three comment formats are supported by the IDE:
//
{}
(**)

 
> Is there a Lazarus Style Guide somewhere, that deals with how best to 
> format code so that the IDE can exploit it, 

For the hint stuff, see the above link. 
AFAIK the todo comments are not documented yet. 


> that deals with using fpdoc 
> or something similar for ones own projects, and that possibly even deals 
> with writing help files (of some suitable format)?

About fpdoc
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/FPDoc_Editor

For the rest use your search engine.
 
Mattias