Enhanced syntax highlighting

[jlaurens]

This is the white paper of the eponym project. Please share you ideas below.

[jlaurens]

Syntax hilighting may benefit from QTextFormat and particularly the custom properties (index above QTextFormat::UserProperty). If to each character is associated an integer state, the syntax hilighter is just a map

(current char, current state, next char)→next state

Of course this map can take into account more look behind characters.
The idea is that if sufficiently many sequential characters are hilighted the same way, there might be no need to go further.

Saving this custom state is possible as suggested by this stack overflow answer. That would probably speed up the first hilighting too.