Line Numbers, Code Highlighting in TextView

Question

I'm working on an 'IDE' for Android - it could be useful for editing short scripts / making quick adjustments to files. At the moment I'm just using a simple EditText, but I am wanting to add several features, for example Line Numbering down the left hand side of the EditText and Code Highlighting.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to approach this? For the code highlighting, I'm guessing I'll need to write my own subclass of EditText. For the line numbering, could I have a thin vertical TextView that has the same text size as the EditText??

Yes, I'm aware editing code on a mobile sized screen is painful.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The stock Email application uses an html view (android.webkit.WebView) to wrap even text emails in html. Perhaps rending the code into html and displaying in a WebView would be a good way to get syntax highlighting.

For line numbering, the thin TextView beside the EditText seems reasonable. You might want to encapsulate it into your own View class that handles both subviews - and allows line numbers to be turned on and off (and perhaps does other good things like keep text size of both equal)

I think an ide for Android is a good idea. Would be nice to be able to code on an airplane without having to get the tray table involved =)