VEE Colorizer

Introduction
Requirements
Installation
How it works
Known bugs
Want to help?
Credits

Introduction

VEE Colorizer paints the detail view of VEE programs automatically, depending on the object type. In the default configuration, this means that loops (e.g. Until Break...Break) will become blue, functions call boxes orange, constants grey and so on.

Before colorizing...

...and after running VEE Colorizer:

The color scheme can be changed in colors.ini

Every time you invoke the colorizer, a backup from the original .VEE file is created with the extension ".colorizer.bak". This is done for security reasons, if VEE is unable to load the colorized file. Of course, this shouldn't happen, but if... :-).

Requirements

Nothing special, if you just want to use it.

If you want to code by your own, you may also want to:

Run the source by means of a perl interpreter: you need a perl interpreter. A good and free one is ActivePerl.
Create the .exe file by your own: you need a Win32 C compiler, such as MS Visual Studio or gcc (untested). See Building instructions for more info.

Installation

Unpack all files and directories to a destination of your choice, e.g. C:\Program Files\VeeColorizer. For uninstallation, simply delete this directory (VEE colorizer does not make use of the registry, so there is no garbage left).

Invoking VEE Colorizer

On the command line

veecolorizer [-options] inputfiles...

[-options]

-c <file>: read color table from <file> (default: colors.ini)
-f: force (overwrite existing colors)
-q: be quiet (don't print any information)
-u: uncolorize (remove color info from all objects)

From Windows Explorer

veecolorizer.exe

C:\Windows\SendTo

C:\Documents And Settings\<username>\SendTo

Send to > / Vee Colorizer

Tip: You can do this from within VEE. Save your current file, select "File/Open...", right-click the just saved file and run the Colorizer, then open your file again.

How it works

A VEE file is plain text in a special format. Objects and their relationship are stored in blocks, delimited by nested parentheses. These blocks are analyzed, and to those describing detail view objects, color info is added.

The basic description of any object in a block that starts with the string
This is where main features are defined.
Additionally, properties for each object (color, position, title, description, settings etc.) are stored in a separate section called
Each entry consists of a key and one or more associated values, depending on the key type. This is the place where color info is stored, for the detail view these are keys titleBg and titleFg.

When invoked, VeeColorizer first looks for an object definition, starting with a new block beginning with the keyword "(device". Then a color table lookup is made to find the correct color, and appropriate colors are stored along with the object identifier. This continues until one of the following conditions become true:

A devCarrierFor line for is found. Then color info is added by inserting titleBg and/or titleFg lines.
A new context (child object, e.g. UserObject) is found. Then all collected information about device lines remain on the stack, and recursively device sections are searched again.
A context definition ends (this is when a sufficient number of closing brackets was found).

For more info, look at the Perl source code.

Known bugs and limitations

This should also work for the HP-UX version of VEE, but THIS IS COMPLETELY UNTESTED! If you have any experience with this, please send me a mail.

Want to help?

Comments, bugfixes and suggestions are welcome - and if you have created a nice "Theme" (aka .ini-file), mail it me. It will be bundled with the next "official" version of VEE colorizer.

Credits

Christian Groeger and Steffen Walter for their ideas and testing, Porsche for their really fast cars :-)