Deep Dive document download for the Language Service in a Dialog sample included in the VS SDK.
Introduction
This VS SDK sample demonstrates the concept of hosting language services within a dialog. Language services are packages that integrate a specific language into Visual Studio. C#, VB, F#, IronPython are all implemented as packages including the project system of the language, editor customizations (like IntelliSense, syntax coloring), and the build system. Language services are designed so that they proffer their well-defined set of functions to other packages.
This sample implements a package that exposes a modal dialog where the native code editor window of VS is hosted using the VB Language Service. When the user types VB code into the editor, VB syntax color settings are applied. Going through this deep dive you will be familiar with the following ideas:
How to put the code editor window used by VS into a modal dialog?
How can a native window be wrapped in a .NET WinForms control?
How can the VS code window be instantiated and set up to use the VB language service?
How to change the language service used by the code window?
To understand concepts treated here it is assumed that you are familiar with the idea of VSPackages and you know how to build and register very simple (even non-functional) packages. To get more information about packages, please have a look at the Package Reference Sample (C# Reference.Package sample).
|