Interest in syntax highlighting for ORCA?

General Discussion
1

I know ORCA is generally popular. Would there be interest in adding syntax highlighting rules for the ORCA input generator? (Even if it’s just a small start?)

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2

If there were syntax highlighting for ORCA, the implementation could serve as a reference for how to set up such an assistant to other programs, too. In particular, I think about MOPAC and its recently released version 23.2.3, in part for a publication in JOSS which is the reason why I bookmarked your post. (So far, I’m not a user of ORCA.)

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3

There’s actually already an example for NWChem, e.g.

You put together a set of regex patterns for keywords, title, properties, comments, etc.

          "patterns": [
            { "regexp": "\\b(?:scratch|permanent)?_dir\\b" },
            { "regexp": "\\bmemory\\b" },
          ],
          "format": { "preset": "keyword" }
        },

If you’re interested in helping put something together for MOPAC, let me know and we can start assembling the patterns for keywords, etc.

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4

Here’s the NWChem syntax highlighting rules.

As I said, the most important thing is to start putting together sets of keywords, etc. for ORCA, MOPAC, etc.

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5

I know that @brockdyer03 is planning to overhaul the ORCA generator as soon as my avogenerators PR is merged :smiley:

I imagine he could be persuaded to write syntax highlighting rules at the same time (though he has expressed a burning hatred of regex in the past).

6

I am indeed planning an overhaul, and even though I do hate regex, I’m going to temporarily sed -e 's/hate/love/g' so that I can get some nice syntax highlighting going.

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7

Simply s/hate/survive/g or s/hate/accommodate/ would probably be okay.

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