Blitz 'Quick Help' utility

I was delighted when the Blitz folx separated the IDE from the compiler. One develops an attachment to a particular editor, in my case, Crimson Editor, and I just plain don't like the Blitz default IDE.

One thing I've missed about that default IDE is the brief syntax help that shows in the status bar when you press F1 over a keyword. How would I duplicate this in Crimson Editor?

So, I whipped up a quickie Win32 console app that takes a Blitz keyword as a command-line parameter, searches the Blitz syntax file, and displays lines that match your query. Using Crimson's "capture output" feature, I can see the matches right in my editor environment.

I don't know if this useful to anybody else; it may work in other editors, too. If you want to try it out, get it at

http://sommerponyfarm.com/BlitzQuickHelp.zip (22KB)

The software is free; I've included source code and a list of Blitz keywords.

You can generate your own keywords list by using "BLITZCC.EXE +k".

The program is written in plain C, so there's no DLLs, OCXs, registry settings, or INI files to mess with. Just be sure the KEYWORDS.TXT file is in the same directory and the main EXE.

Out of interest, have you got a syntax highlight file for Blitz using Crimson?

JeffS,
Excellent. I am using AGREP.EXE to get the same functionality in UltraEdit, eg: search a file for the keyword, show output. It works very well. Your file is only 32k while agrep.exe is 200k, so I will give your utility a try, thanks!

@MasterBreaker: yes, I do have the syntax highlighting working, too. The BLITZCC.EXE has another option to dump just the keywords without the arguments ("-k" IIRC). Fortunately, the dump is in order of command types, so the basic BASIC syntax (IF, THEN, GOSUB etc) are in one color, and the Blitz-y commands (MoveEntity etc) are in another.

I can post these files too if anybody's interested.

FYI, I'm using Crimson 3.51.

Oh, and another thing: I've built two versions of this thing. The one I posted generates results to the standard output; I've got another that pops the info in a Windows "MessageBox" (should you not be able to capture the stdout.)

Referring to the syntax highlighting:
"I can post these files too if anybody's interested."

Yes, please post them. Thanks!

OK, I've got the Crimson syntax files available at

http://sommerponyfarm.com/CrimsonBlitz.zip (4KB)

Just plop these files in the appropriate subdirectory under your main Crimson installation.

Note: I'm using Crimson 3.51; I don't know if this will work in older versions.

Hmmmmmm..... CrimsonBlitz.zip...... "Crimson Blitz" would be cool name for my next game.