BBCode syntax highlighting

[seshoumara]

When working with RitchTextLabel and BBCode, especially when using multiple tags, it's incredibly difficult to tell where a tag starts and where it ends. It's also hard to distinguish between tags, options, values and regular text. As such, I think having a syntax highlighting for BBCode would greatly improve its ease of use. See current readability in screenshot below:

One last suggestion is to highlight custom BBCode tags differently from the default tags, if possible.

The implementation is up to you, from reusing existing highlight colors of regular code from the Text Editor setting or adding new colors with BBCode prefix/suffix in their name or something else. I don't have experience to tell if this should be in the core or done using GDExtension.

[Mickeon]

In theory it could be done with an addon, by the way. See also https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_editorproperty.html and https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_editorinspector.html

[MrEliptik]

I agree, editing BBcode is a pain a could be made better.

I would also suggest autocomplete. If you write a open tag, it could close automatically, just like () in gdscript.
I also think the possibility to highlight text and apply a tag with a shortcut or right click could be awesome. I don't know if this should be another proposal?

[Mickeon]

If you want to go more in detail about it feel free to make another proposal. I feel like what you're suggesting are straight upgrades with not much to discuss.

A few questions remain, though.
How does the Inspector deduce that the text being written is using BBCode? Probably with a PROPERTY_HINT.
What colours to use for the syntax highlighting? Having additional custom colors in the Editor Settings for it may be a bit overkill.

[seshoumara]

You know BBCode is being written because the 'Enabled' checkbox is on. See image at the top. As for the colors, I don't think it is overkill. It would be clear what they're for and you don't have the coupling where one color is responsible for two highlights, regular code and BBCode.

In the Text Editor settings, on Highlighting (see above), there is a sort of section for GDScript-specific things. I can envision another section called 'BBCode' with all the respective colors underneath.

[MarioLiebisch]

Even if it could be done in a plugin, I'd say this is a big enough QoL change to warrant it being in the base engine (especially considering it doesn't need a new component either).

[LauraWebdev]

Especially considering this is a change that benefits everyone. I don't think making devs find and install a plugin for each of their project for this is the right way.

[Calinou]

We have PROPERTY_HINT_EXPRESSION that is used for AnimationNodeStateMachineTransition.advance_expression. This property hint makes text show up with a fixed-width code font instead of the main font and uses standard syntax highlighting (based on braces, keywords – but not GDScript-specific):

We can probably add PROPERTY_HINT_BBCODE that does something similar (perhaps without the code font though), implement a BBCode syntax highlighter and toggle it based on the value of bbcode_enabled in the RichTextLabel node.

The implementation of PROPERTY_HINT_EXPRESSION is here: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/da945ce6266ce27ba63b6b08dc0eb2414594f7cb/editor/editor_properties.cpp#L3648-L3650

https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/da945ce6266ce27ba63b6b08dc0eb2414594f7cb/editor/editor_properties.cpp#L242-L247

We'd need to change EditorPropertyMultilineText's constructor so it accepts an enum with a language type instead of a boolean, but this should be feasible as this API isn't exposed to scripting.

Developing the highlighter itself might prove nontrivial though. You can see my attempt at creating a XML syntax highlighter which didn't quite look perfect, although it was still better than nothing. I'd like different tags to be highlighted differently based on their depth or purpose (color, size, alignment), rather than having all tags be highlighted with the same color.