Manish Kumar's Blog: ABAP Syntax Highlighting in Notepad++ Part 2

Posted by Manish Kumar 12 Feb, 2014 This is a follow-up to my previous blog ABAP Syntax Highlighting in Notepad++ I have modified the UDL file to make code look more like New ABAP Editor. I'll soon try out similar thing in jEdit text editor. The modified UDL file might be useful for followers of ABAP Development space.

Before and After

I had previously covered the steps required to apply the ABAP UDL configuration in fresh installation of Notepad++. By following those steps, we could get ABAP code to look like this:

By using the modified UDL file given in this post, you could get ABAP code to look like this:

Generated by Jive on 2014-04-16+02:00 1

Manish Kumar's Blog: ABAP Syntax Highlighting in Notepad++ Part 2

The UDL file contents can be found at end of this post.

Overview of changes done

1. By comparing screenshots, you can see that the color scheme looks more like New ABAP Editor. 2. Code folding (the expand/collapse icon on left) is enabled for comments 3. Typing a single quote was disturbing the entire the look of entire code to follow. This is because the highlighter tried to search for next occurrence of single quote, and color the multiple lines in between as literal. ABAP comments and literals always single-line. Similar issue is totally ruining the experience of ABAP highlighter in New SCN Wiki platform. New UDL fixes this. 4. Line comment should work only when * is at beginning of line. There is a special character in UDL to specify that. 5. Identifying the literals as literals, both for single quote and backticks.

See this screenshot from SCN Wiki page using ABAP highlighting. Code following double quote across multiple lines is treated as comment. Wiki platform provider Atlassian does not know that ABAP does not have multi-line comments.

Generated by Jive on 2014-04-16+02:00 2

Manish Kumar's Blog: ABAP Syntax Highlighting in Notepad++ Part 2

Modified UDL file

Below is the xml code for UDL file. You can copy it and save as abap2.xml. Then follow the same old steps to import the new UDL into Notepad++ and see the difference. It appears personal blog does not have the luxury to attach file. This is the reason why I have given the content in xml highlighter. <NotepadPlus> <UserLang name="abap2" ext="abap" udlVersion="2.1"> <Settings> <Global caseIgnored="ye /. 236 Views Tags: abap, syntax_highlighting, notepad, notepad_plus, notepad++, scn_editor There are no comments on this post

Generated by Jive on 2014-04-16+02:00 3