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I'd like to inquire about the feasibility of using YUI 2 RTE along with Auto-Complete (and possibly other components) to implement a Ruby editor with application-specific extensions (abut 100 classes and 1,000 methods).

I can use HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to implement this "web dialog" interface to the application's Ruby API. (There will also be at least one Ruby file for the application to load at start-up to make the application aware of this extension/plug-in.)

The application (which I prefer not to publicly identify) ships with a bare-bones, one-line-at-a-time "web dialog" interface with history recall (via up- and down-arrow on keyboard). There is no syntax highlighting, no auto-suggest, no auto-completion, etc. features. So I want to replace it with one that does these things (at least).

I've already looked at an existing 3rd party's product, which was based on jquery. Unfortunately this product falls well short of my standards, so I'd like to write my own. (The jquery files used were: ui.core.js; widget,js; 1.7.2.min.js; console-extensions.js; and fieldselection.js)

I've also looked at Dav's YUI: Editor: Code Editor w/Syntax Highlighting and CodePress--so it seems I'm on the right track in terms of being able to do this with YUI 2.

However, what about the feasibility to include such features as auto-suggest and auto-complete? That is, as one is typing in Ruby code, the following happens:

Type 'A' -> immediately causes a pop-up to appear containing Ruby modules starting with 'A'; user then presses the tab key to select the first item in the list (let's say it's 'Abc'):

Abc -> type '.d' -> causes all methods assigned to module 'Abc' to appear in a pop-up; then press the tab key/arrow keys to select one ('def'):

etc.

Then once the user has entered all the code, it has to be stripped-of-HTML so the "plain text" can be sent to the application's Ruby interpreter.

While I'm not desirous of implementing Notepad++ or CodeWright 7.5 (remember this?), I do want to produce a polished product.

So I'm looking for some guidance, suggestions, examples, and some measure for how difficult an undertaking this will be.


Thank you.

How about this instead?

User types 'Abc.', then clicks a dynamically-configured button named "Methods"--which in this case since the user typed 'Abc' plus '.', all the methods of Abc would appear in a list when the user clicks the button; from this list the user could select a method, which would then automatically be inserted after the '.' -

Abc.def.

Thank you, Dav.