Fold

Introduction

One of the reasons that Textadept is a pleasure to use is that the software uses the available space very efficiently: most of the window is filled with your text.

Code folding augments this feature. The software which handles the folding is in textadept/lexers/lexer.lua.

The function M.fold shows the different ways to accomplish folding:

• If the lexer for your specific programming language contains a lexer._fold, this function handles the folding specifics
• Otherwise, if the lexer contains a table lexer._foldsymbols, folding is derived from that table.
• Finally, folding can work through indentation

This text shows a simple example of folding by means of lexer._fold

An example

For my job I develop library software. This software is used by people with very different language backgrounds. Translations are done by means of text files which contains lgcodes. These are identifiers which are then translated in several languages. Such a text file - developers call them lfiles - is structured in a very simple way.

An example:

lgcode colSectionIdentity:
    N: «Identiteit»
    E: «Identity»
    F: «Identité»

lgcode colSectionIdentityInfo:
    N: «Dit onderdeel van het formulier toont een beknopt
        overzicht van de collecties»
    E: «This part of the form shows a concise overview of
        the collections»
    F: «Cet élément du formulaire affiche un bref aperçu
        des collections»

lgcode colSectionStatus:
    N: «Status»
    E: «Status»
    F: «Statut»

lgcode colSectionStatusInfo:
    N: «Dit onderdeel van het formulier toont diverse
        elementen in verband met het bewerken van de
        collectiedata»
    E: «This part of the form shows different elements
        related to editing the collection data»
    F: «Cet élément du formulaire affiche divers éléments
        en rapport avec l'édition des données
        de la collection»

To work easily with this kind of file, I made a lexer for Textadept. (.textadept/lexers/lfile.lua)

Folding for lfiles

Folding is very simple: a folding point just before lgcode. The descriptive approach - using lexer._foldsymbols - is very attractive, but I could not make it work: beginning folding points are easy but ending folding points are - in this case at least - more difficult.

So, in the lexer file (.textadept/lexers/lfile.lua), I put a function M._fold (M is the table which is returned by the lexer file)

--
-- Simple folding (documentaton is found in
-- textadept/lexers/lexer.lua)
-- Folds *text*, a chunk of text starting at position *start_pos*
-- on line number *start_line* with a beginning fold level of
-- *start_level* in the buffer.
-- Called by the Scintilla lexer; **do not call from Lua**.
-- @param text The text in the buffer to fold.
-- @param start_pos The position in the buffer *text* starts at.
-- @param start_line The line number *text* starts on.
-- @param start_level The fold level *text* starts on.
-- @return table of fold levels.
-- @name _fold
function M._fold(text, start_pos, start_line, start_level)
  local regex = '^lgcode'
  local header = lexer.FOLD_HEADER
  local folds = {}
  local line_num = start_line
  local current_level = prev_level
  for line in text:gmatch('.-\r?\n') do
    if line:find(regex) then folds[line_num] = header
    else folds[line_num] = header + 1 end
    line_num = line_num + 1
  end
  return folds
end

This function works very well. I am sure this function can be easily extended in more complex settings.

Richard Philips