Configuring Keywords
Choose Words in the Define Element As combo box. Choose Keyword in the Kind combo box. Enable the Whole Word option. Fill out the list of keywords in the Word List edit box. Use new lines to separate keywords.
Configuring Symbols
Choose Words in the Define Element As combo box. Choose Symbol in the Kind combo box. Disable the Whole Word option. Fill out the list of symbols in the Word List edit box. Use new lines to separate symbols.
Configuring Comments
There are two kinds of comments: comments that end at the end of a line and comments that end at an ending marker.
To configure a comment that ends at the end of the line, choose Rest Of Line in the Define Element As combo box. Choose Comment in the Kind combo box. Enter the Start Marker for the comment. If the start marker is an identifier, such as REM, enable the Whole Word option. If the start marker is not an identifier, such as //, disable the Whole Word option.
To configure a comment that ends at an ending comment marker, choose the Range option in the Define Element As combo box. Choose Comment in the Kind combo box. Enter the Start Marker and the End Marker and enable the Span Lines option. Enable the Allow Nesting option if the programming language allows comments to be nested.
Configuring Strings
Choose the Range option in the Define Element As combo box. Choose String in the Kind combo box. Enter the Start Marker and the End Marker for the string.
Languages often use an escape character to provide a way to specify the start and ending marker of the string in the string itself. For example, in a C string whose start and end marker is a ", you can specify a " in the string with \". In this example, \ is an escape character for ". Enter any escape character in the Escape Char field.
A programming language may have other elements that you may want to classify as a keyword, symbol, comment, or string. For instance, if a language has a character data type, you may define a language element for character constants in the same way you define a language element for strings constants.