Q3SyntaxHighlighter Class Reference
[Qt3Support module]

int Q3SyntaxHighlighter::highlightParagraph ( const QString & text, int endStateOfLastPara )   [pure virtual]

This function is called when necessary by the rich text engine, i.e. on paragraphs which have changed.

In your reimplementation you should parse the paragraph's text and call setFormat() as often as necessary to apply any font and color changes that you require. Your function must return a value which indicates the paragraph's end state: see below.

Some syntaxes can have constructs that span paragraphs. For example, a C++ syntax highlighter should be able to cope with /*...*/ comments that span paragraphs. To deal with these cases it is necessary to know the end state of the previous paragraph (e.g. "in comment").

If your syntax does not have paragraph spanning constructs, simply ignore the endStateOfLastPara parameter and always return 0.

Whenever highlightParagraph() is called it is passed a value for endStateOfLastPara. For the very first paragraph this value is always -2. For any other paragraph the value is the value returned by the most recent highlightParagraph() call that applied to the preceding paragraph.

The value you return is up to you. We recommend only returning 0 (to signify that this paragraph's syntax highlighting does not affect the following paragraph), or a positive integer (to signify that this paragraph has ended in the middle of a paragraph spanning construct).

To find out which paragraph is highlighted, call currentParagraph().

For example, if you're writing a simple C++ syntax highlighter, you might designate 1 to signify "in comment". For a paragraph that ended in the middle of a comment you'd return 1, and for other paragraphs you'd return 0. In your parsing code if endStateOfLastPara was 1, you would highlight the text as a C++ comment until you reached the closing */.