[Lazarus] How to create hints in the IDE

[Martin]

I changed the subject, otherwise it may not get noted by whoever has the 
answer (since the old subject was just about to develop into an endless 
thread...)
My expertise mainly goes to SynEdit, so this may have to be answered by 
someone else.

On 24/07/2010 20:52, Bernd Kreuss wrote:
>
> Ok, then here the concrete things I am currently researching. As I
> already mentioned I am interested in the hints. Some things seemed not
> so consistent to me and so I just wanted to dive right into the code and
> see if there is an easy way to make the hints in the code browser and
> the (not yet existing) hints in the code explorer work like the hints in
> the source editor. I quickly found out that the hints in the code
> browser are working completely different from the hints in the source
> editor. They don't even look up the fpdoc or look up anything, they
> simply show the code and the source position.
>
> Now have the whole IDE loaded in the debugger and looking at the
> callstack while the IDE is trying to generate a hint for the source editor:
>
>    
>> #0 TCODEHELPMANAGER__GETHTMLHINT(0xb5cacd60, 51, 7365, [CHHOCOMPLETE..CHHOCOMMENTS], 0x0, 0x0, true (54), 0xb76dcaa0) at codehelp.pas:2200
>> #1 TIDEHELPMANAGER__GETHINTFORSOURCEPOSITION(0xb5e3e278 '/home/bernd/lazsvn/lazarus/trunk/ide/sourceeditor.pp', {X = 51, Y = 7365}, 0x0, 0x0, 0xb7581500) at helpmanager.pas:1320
>> #2 TMAINIDE__ONSRCNOTEBOOKSHOWHINTFORSOURCE(0xb5b8c220, {X = 417, Y = 387}, {X = 51, Y = 7365}, 0xb7b610e0) at main.pp:15072
>> #3 TSOURCENOTEBOOK__SHOWSYNEDITHINT({X = 756, Y = 556}, 0xb5b118c0) at sourceeditor.pp:7378
>> #4 TSOURCENOTEBOOK__HINTTIMER(0xb7595120, 0xb5b118c0) at sourceeditor.pp:7315
>> #5 CUSTOMTIMER_TCUSTOMTIMER_$__DOONTIMER at :0
>> #6 CUSTOMTIMER_TCUSTOMTIMER_$__TIMER at :0
>> #7 GTK2PROC_GTKTIMERCB$POINTER$$LONGBOOL at :0
>> #8 ?? at :0
>> #9 g_main_context_dispatch at :0
>> #10 ?? at :0
>> #11 g_main_context_iteration at :0
>> #12 gtk_main_iteration_do at :0
>> #13 GTK2INT_TGTK2WIDGETSET_$__APPWAITMESSAGE at :0
>> #14 FORMS_TAPPLICATION_$__IDLE$BOOLEAN at :0
>> #15 FORMS_TAPPLICATION_$__HANDLEMESSAGE at :0
>> #16 FORMS_TAPPLICATION_$__RUNLOOP at :0
>> #17 INTERFACEBASE_TWIDGETSET_$__APPRUN$TAPPLICATIONMAINLOOP at :0
>> #18 FORMS_TAPPLICATION_$__RUN at :0
>> #19 main at lazarus.pp:113
>>      
> (I found no other way to find out what exactly is going on with this
> hint window thing than using a breakpoint and singlestepping it in the
> debugger because at some point it would call a procedure variable where
> I had no clue to where it would point at runtime because the code is so
> incredibly far spread across so many units and goes through so many
> abstraction layers that I have no idea how to find this out from looking
> at this gigantic codemonster alone.)
>
> TCodeHelpManager.GetHTMLHint(
>    Code: TCodeBuffer;
>    X, Y: integer;
>    Options: TCodeHelpHintOptions;
>    out BaseURL, HTMLHint: string;
>    out CacheWasUsed: boolean): TCodeHelpParseResult;
>
> seems to do the interesting things It will look up fpdoc and comments
> and do everything to create a useful hint.
>
> I assume this is the "correct" way of creating the contents of a hint
> window. I was initially hoping there would just be some hint window
> class that i can just instantiate anywhere and just have to give it the
> source code position (or whatever type of data is usually used to denote
> a piece of code) but it seems to work differently. It seems to first
> create the hint contents and then later use them for a hint window to
> fill it.
>
> Would I have any chance to try and use the above method to create the
> hint string in the code browser window? I remember having seen there a
> node variable that has a TCodeBuffer somewhere in it and also X and Y
> seem to be accessible. Would this be possible? From where do I get a
> TCodeHelpManager object? Is there already one around somewhere that I
> can simply access or do I have to instantiate my own?
>
> Or is this all complete nonsense and i should not mess around with it at
> all because it will all be completely replaced and rewritten?
>
>
> --
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