[Lazarus] clarification / Re: constant-highlight ? [Re: quick opinion poll / pascal highlighting "case"]

[Jürgen Hestermann]

> This was already and always the case. any identifier, char, number 
> is/was highlighted the same never mind if it is in a case label, an 
> assignment, an expression .....

Yes, and I think it should not be changed.

> The question was, if a case label (any case-label, never mind it being a 
> number, char, string, ident) should have any additional highlights.
> So case labels will stand out from other source?

I don't think so.

> The idea is that they are kind of a "section header" introducing a block 
> of code, that is bound to a condition.

Yes, but that's better done with indentation. I always use a formatting like this:

case x of
   1,2,3:
      begin
      ... do something
      end;
   4,5,6:
      begin
      ... do something
      end;
   7,8,9:
      begin
      ... do something
      end;
else
   ... do something
   end; // of case   

> In other conditions, you have the "if then" being bold, and the actual 
> expression local to the highlighted conditon marker (if then)
> In case of a "case" the label can be far away from the highlight of the 
> "case of" => it does not stand out, and can be overlooked.

Formatting helps here more I think. The same applies to "IF ... THEN ... ELSE". The ELSE part can be far away from the IF too.

> - in small case blocks, it is easily seen by the indentation rules (if 
> they are there, lets hope for it)
> - in big case blocks, there may be many levels of indent outside, and 
> inside the case. It is near impossible to tell if anything is exactly on 
> the case-level of indent (especially if the case itself is scrolled of 
> the visible screen).

I always follow a strict indentation rule (each block is indented by 3 characters, matching BEGINs and ENDs are either on the same line or are aligned in the same column, all commands of a block start on the same column as their enclosing BEGIN END, etc.). I don't see how this can be replaced by coloring. If you have nested case statements you will still not know to which of the case statements a constant belongs to unless you have a stict intendation rule.