Peachpie.Microsoft.CodeAnalysis/docs/ide/glossary.md

Glossary of IDE terminolgy

• IntelliSense - A blanket term for a collection of features, including completion, signature help, quick info, and smart tags.

• Completion (aka autocomplete or statement completion) - The dropdown of possible items to insert into the editor at the current location. Generally triggered automatically when typing or pressing Ctrl+J or Ctrl+Space. Can be in one of two modes, either Completion mode or Suggestion mode. In Completion mode (the default) where typing any character that isn't part of the currently selected entry "commits" the current entry and inserts its text. Suggestion mode completion shows a "builder", and the current item is "soft selected" (outlined, instead of fully selected). In suggestion mode typing a character that isn't in the list doesn't commit the item, in order to commit you have to do it explicitly with tab/enter/double click. You can toggle between completion mode and suggestion mode by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Space. In cases where it's ambiguous whether you are inserting a new identifier or referring to an existing one, the IDE generally forces suggestion mode so that you don't accidentally commit an existing item when trying to declare a new one (for example, in a context where a delegate is expected, suggestion mode is forced to allow typing a lambda parameter name).

• Completion builder - When in suggestion mode, completion shows an extra entry at the top of the list containing a watermark with what sort of declaration can appear if no text is in the editor, or else an entry matching the currently typed text. This is intended to represent that completion will not commit to another item in the but will instead preserve your current text unless commit is forced (with tab/enter).

• Signature Help (aka Parameter Help) - The tooltip showing the possible overloads that shows when typing a method call or the generic parameters of a type/method). Normally invoked with Ctrl+K, Ctrl+P or Ctrl+Shift+Space.

• Quick Info - The tooltip that appears when hovering over an identifier showing information about it. Can also be invoked with Ctrl+K, Ctrl+I.

• Smart Tag - The small blue or red square that appeared under an identifier in VS 2005 to VS 2013 indicating that the IDE could help perform an action. Replaced with Light bulbs in VS 2015.

• Light Bulbs - An indication that the IDE can help with some action in the form of a light bulb icon in the left margin, or in the Quick Info tooltip. Normally invoked with Ctrl+.. Menu items are generically called Code Actions, which come in two flavors - either Quick Fixes for diagnostics, or Refactorings. Quick Fixes show the lightbulb whenever the cursor is on the line with the diagnostic, whereas refactorings are shown on demand when Ctrl+. is invoked.

• Margins - Reserved space around the core editor window. Most margins appear on the left side of the editor, for example: Line number, track changes, outlining, breakpoints, lightbulb, etc.

• Outlining - The feature that allows collapsing regions of code.

• Classification - The process by which syntax highlighting happens. In Roslyn, there are two types of classification - Syntactic Classification happens synchronously (though potentially based on a stale syntax tree), and Semantic Classification, which happens on a slight delay and is responsible for coloring things like type names, var, dynamic, etc.

• Squiggles - The wavy underlines under identifiers that have some sort of diagnostic. Normally red for errrors, green for warnings, purple for Edit and Continue rude edits.

• Navigation Bar - The three dropdowns at the top of the code editor that allow you to select the project context, type, and member.

• Tagging - A general term in the VS Editor API to allow extensions like Roslyn to return collections of spans to the editor. Many IDE features are built on top of tagging: classification, outlining, squiggles, line separators, etc.

• Adornments - A general term in the VS Editor API for adding visual elements to the editor, often in response to the existince of tags. Many of the adornments seen for C# and VB are actually implemented in the Core Editor (squiggles, classification, outlining, etc), but a few are in Roslyn (suggestions, line separators).