Editor Support

Scintilla Text Editor
KDE Support

Editing quickbook files is usually done with text editors both simple and powerful. The following sections list the settings for some editors which can help make editing quickbook files a bit easier.

Scintilla Text Editor

Section contributed by Dean Michael Berris

The Scintilla Text Editor (SciTE) is a free source code editor for Win32 and X. It uses the SCIntilla source code editing component.

You can use the following settings to highlight quickbook tags when editing quickbook files.

qbk=*.qbk
lexer.*.qbk=props
use.tabs.$(qbk)=0
tab.size.$(qbk)=4
indent.size.$(qbk)=4
style.props.32=$(font.base)
comment.stream.start.props=[/
comment.stream.end.props=]
comment.box.start.props=[/
comment.box.middle.props=
comment.box.end.props=]

boost::hs::quickbook is a syntax highlighting designed to work with Katepart. It can be used in KWrite, Kate, Konqueror and KDevelop, and supports all the constructs of Quickbook 1.4 including tables, list, templates and macros.

.qbk loaded in a text editor
.qbk loaded with boost::hs support

html generated from this .qbk file

Table 30.7. Code examples

Name	Code	Description
for loop	`for(int k=0; k<10; k++) v+=k;`	Sums some numbers.
while loop	`{ int k; while( k < 10 ) { v+=k; k++ } }`	Same effect.
infinite loop	`while( true ) { v+=1; }`	Not a good example.

Code Folding

boost::hs goes far beyond simple coloring. One useful thing you can get the editor to do is to mark regions. They appear in a small grey line and each region can be folded or unfolded independently.

Auto Comment / Uncomment

Another important feature is the possibility to auto-comment or uncomment some piece of code (Tools - Comment). Commented regions can be uncommented simple calling the uncomment command while being in it.

Styles reference

Name	Style	Description
plain text	normal black	Plain text at each level.
formatted text	formatted black	Bold, italic, underline and mixes. Teletype, replaceable, strikeout.
structure	light blue	All quickbook structures characters ([, ], [block-type, simple formating boundaries, lists keywords (*, #)
macros	red	Names in macro definitions, macros insertion if it is used the __xxx__ proposed sintaxis.
templates	red	Names in template definitions
anchors	red	All the keywords that are used to link quickbooks together.
comments	italic light gray	Inside the commentaries.
tables	HTML like	Reveal the structure, bold title, higlighted HTML like columns titles.
variable lists	HTML like	Reveal the structure, bold title, bold HTML like items names.
c++ code	cpp Kate syntax	Code blocks and inline code.
paths	green	Image, files and web paths
IDE specific	dark blue	IDE commands

About boost::hs

boost::hs::quickbook is a component of boost::hs, a syntax highlighting for C++, doxygen, Boost.Build jamfiles and QuickBook. boost::hs has his own page here.

	Note
	boost::hs::cpp support QuickBook code import comments style!

Installing boost::hs

There exist an ongoing effort to push boost::hs upstream to the KatePart project. In a few months KDE may have native Quickbook support! For the moment you must download and install it.

You can download boost::hs from here.

	Note
	A copy of boost::hs::quickbook and boost::hs::cpp is available in `boost/tools/quickbook/extra/katepart`.

In order to install it you must copy the content in the folder katepart/syntax/ to the appropriate katepart syntax folder in your machine. In general this folder will be in /usr/share/apps/katepart/syntax. A bash script named install.sh is included that copy the files to this folder.