Re: Guidelines for the "symbol" syntax class

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden> writes:

> That's why I'm asking if there are any existing guidelines, formal or
> informal, that I can take into consideration. That might also inform changes
> to xref-collection-references and company-dabbrev-code; not just ruby-mode.

> Would anyone care for another wall of text?

I suppose my informal guideline is to implement a strategy that works best for
the mode you want to derive information from, and to not expect syntax classes
to be a capable enough interface. I'd expect Ruby symbols to include ":",
personally. A::B is the qualified name of a symbol -- although "B" is
technically an unqualified symbol in its own right within that qualified name.

Better yet, define a more general API that all modes can use, since many modes
struggle with these same issues (imenu, thing-at-pt, dabbrev, etc). This
echoes back to our long IDE thread. Perhaps we need layered, semantically-
defined classes, such that a given text position might occur within many such
layers (for example, selection might choose B, A::B, or A::B.foo, depending on
how many times I smash the "select current" key).

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2