Specific color for invalid names

[pml-lang]

If I write:

[doc
]

... the whole text is highlighted. That's ok.

However If I write:

[do
]

... then [do is highlighted in the same color as before, but ] isn't highlighted.
As this is an invalid tag, it would be nice to display the whole text (or at least [do) in an 'error' color.

The same could be done for attributes. An invalid attribute name is displayed in an 'error' color.

[tajmone]

As this is an invalid tag, it would be nice to display the whole text (or at least [do) in an 'error' color

This is in the TODO list, as annotated in the source code

  maybe_node:
    - include: block_nodes
    - include: inline_nodes
    - include: text_processing_nodes
    - include: unknown_node
    # TODO: When all nodes are implemented, all that's left is an
    #       unescaped '[', which should be scoped as invalid/error!
    - include: bail-out

... then [do is highlighted in the same color as before, but ] isn't highlighted.

The color depends on the scheme you're using, with my scheme they are differently colored. Currently, [do is scoped as entity.name.tag.other.begin.pml, which is the unknown_node element, just a temporary fallback to cover unimplemented nodes:

  unknown_node:
    # This is a just a temporary scope, to cover the unimplemented nodes.
    # It will be removed once all nodes are implemented.
    - match: '\[[a-z][a-z_]*\b'
      scope: entity.name.tag.other.begin.pml

The fact that the ] isn't highlighted seems a bug that was introduced by some later changes. I'll have to look at this, the syntax tests were supposed to cover it, but I must have forgotten this test for unknown tags.

On Using invalid Scope

Using the invalid scope right now would just look bad, since there too many unimplemented nodes still. Once all nodes and attributes are implemented, than we could add this feature, but I'd like to test it first.

The problem is that it might lead to unpleasant typing, since incomplete node names would always show as invalid, until they're fully typed. You can see this already if you manually type [doc: it changes color once you've typed the final c. But since the invalid scope is usually highlighted with a red background in most color schemes, it would look bad.

This is the main reason why the invalid scope is rarely used, expect maybe to cover specific contexts (e.g. a string where string are not allowed), or longer than expected elements, etc.

Sublime PML currently uses the invalid scope to highlight out-of-range dates and times (only where they're expected), and as you can see when it does you get a really strong background color catching the attention.

Also, if a new tag or attribute is added to the language, it would show up as invalid until the syntax is updated. So this has to be carefully evaluated first.

[pml-lang]

Once all nodes and attributes are implemented, than we could add this feature, but I'd like to test it first.

Makes sense. Thank you for clarifying this.

[tajmone]

Unknown Node: Orphan ] Bug Fixed!

... then [do is highlighted in the same color as before, but ] isn't highlighted.

I've now fixed this problem in commit ff92c51. It was indeed a bug. It's easy to loose track of the syntax stack nesting level, with all these nodes inside other nodes.

Sublime Text 3 offer this amazing syntax tester which allows to track any feature-breaking changes — but you must ensure the tests are there in the first place. Unfortunately, it doesn't offer a debugging tool to trace problems, or view what's going on in the stack during these tests.

Other editors using similar syntaxes don't provide a testing tool like this one, which makes it very hard to build complex syntaxes (when you break the syntax it's hard to tell where things went wrong).

[pml-lang]

Great. Thank you.