[Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Martin wrote:
> On 16/05/2012 14:13, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>> Martin wrote:
>>>
>>> The normal way (see example):
>>>      // Line 0, from start of line to pos 3 (3 chars) highlighted as 
>>> Attr1
>>>      Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1);
>>>
>>> but this will do a single char
>>>      Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1);  // Attr1 from col 3
>>>      Highlighter.AddToken(0,4,tkText);  // text from col 4
>>>
>>
>> I don't think any sort of pre-existing custom highlighter will work. 
>> The requirement here is that anything- completely context-free- that 
>> the user enters is red, anything that the host supplies (over telnet, 
>> serial line etc.) is black. Either of those can be complete garbage, 
>> but should still show up in the correct colour (and should stay 
>> correct, irrespective of scrolling etc.).
> 
> The position highlighter refers to position in text. Scrolling via 
> scrollbar is no problem.
> 
> But if you add/remove lines; or add/remove chars in a line, you must 
> update the positions.
> 
> I assume you have a fixed amount of lines and columns? If so it should 
> be very simple to write a pos-highlighter (part of your project, does 
> not need to be registerred in IDE), that has
> 
> CharAttributes: Array[1..maxLine] of array [ 1..MaxColumn] of TAttribute
> 
> Of course that is not practical if you have thousands of lines, as it 
> would require a lot of storage....

Since it's emulating a mechanical terminal that printed to roll paper, 
the number of lines is indeterminate and increasing. I suppose that I 
could limit it to (say) 1000, but if other people started using it 
there'd be bound to be somebody complain.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]