Java software editor / syntax highlighter

Question

I have to build a software editor for Java, so think of just a very simplified Netbeans / Eclipse. The first area which I want to do is the Syntax Highlighting.

I found a few libraries / open source editors such as jEdit, BlueJ and jsyntaxpane which will be useful for building my own.

What I am looking for though is any literature / journals / books / articles which explain the process of writing a syntax highlighter.

Answer 1

Luckily for you, jEdit provide a syntax package, which is a Java Bean. There is also Jintilla. If you have to code this yourself, you want to parse the file and tokenize the items found. Apply different colours to the different tokens.