Intelli-sense Functions

The intelli-sense support in the EditControl consists principally of the Context Choice, the Context Prompt, and the Context Tooltip features. These features are analogous to the List Members, Parameter Info, and Quick Info intellisense features in Visual Studio.NET, respectively.

A Code Snippet is a reusable fragment of the program that is stored in a xml file and retrieved when needed. Such code snippets, similar to those in Visual Studio, can be included while creating files using the EditControl.

Predefined code snippets similar to VS.Net 2005 can be included in the EditControl. Complete support to load and save VS.Net 2005 compatible code snippets is available. The code will be highlighted to indicate that data has to be entered to complete it. The list of code snippets available for insertion will be displayed in a code snippet popup window. Keyboard shortcuts are also available for the same.

The Context Choice support allows creation of popups for displaying a list of options used to complete what the user is typing. This feature is modeled on the Visual Studio's List Members intellisense feature and is very convenient when editing programming languages. For example, in C# or VB.NET, when the . (period) character is typed after a class instance name, a popup containing all of the members of the class gets displayed.

As text is typed in the editor, the list automatically changes selection to synchronize with the text that has been entered.

It is also possible to auto-complete the word by using a combination of one of the up/down direction keys and the tab key. The ContextChoice popup can be dismissed by pressing the Esc key.

The list of options displayed in the Context Choice list can be populated from an XML file. Context Prompt options for each of these list elements are also available.

The Context Prompt feature allows creation of popups for displaying variations of syntax or overloads or method signatures. This feature is modeled on the Parameter Info intellisense feature in Visual Studio. Each of the ContextPrompt items can have a syntax specifier string and text message providing additional information on each item.

The user can scroll through the syntax variations either by using the up/down arrow keys or by clicking on the up/down buttons on the popup.

The ContextPrompt popup can be populated from an xml file that might include variations of syntax, overloads and method signatures.

The Context Tooltip displays an annotation, with helpful information, when the mouse is hovered over a word in the EditControl. This feature is modeled on the Quick Info intellisense feature in Visual Studio. Whenever the mouse is hovered over a word, the Context Tooltip gets updated and if some text information is provided, it is displayed as a tooltip.

The tooltip can be displayed with a time delay, on mouse hover.