As I pointed out before, it now seems possible to write a VS extension that supports any programming language. I’ve been updating AntlrVSIX to input a description of the syntax of a programming language and tag a file of that language in the editor. I have this now working for Antlr and Java, and plan to try a dozen or so languages.
At issue is identifying what are the commonalities of a programming language, such as defining and applied occurrences, and how the editor should use that.
However, some extensions tag the programming language that my extension is also trying to tag, which results in multiple competing and conflicting classifiers and formatters. I solved this problem by changing the IContentType associated with a buffer to one that I define for the extension. But, ideally, I’d prefer to just “turn off” any formatters that are competing with my formatter.
It may not look like much, but here is how Java is formatted by Visual Studio by default, and how my extension formats it (first attempt to get something working).
