Eclipse: Automatic line wrapping to specified width - eclipse

I'd like for my lines, especially within comments, to be automatically managed so they don't get too long.
I remember once I had a configuration for vim which automatically moved the word I was typing to the next line once I reached 72 characters. It wasn't smart enough to rearrange the paragraph if I edit it, but it was a start.
Is there something that can manage these for me? I have a tendency to write really long comments in my code, and it helps to make them look neat by having consistent width, but it's always a pain to do this because oftentimes editing a sentence requires editing the entire rest of the paragraph.
I have just recently discovered the Ctrl+Shift+F feature. It is amazing and superior to Ctrl+I which is what I was using up till now, but I noticed that it does not do anything to clean up my comments.
Update: The answers are correct when working with Java in Eclipse. It seems like I have to wait for the CDT to incorporate this feature.


In "Windows -> Preferences", go to "Java -> Code style -> Formatter" to customize the formatter (called when you click Ctrl+Shift+F). In the tab "comment", you can set the maximum line width for comments (it can be different then the line width for code).
Tip: in the preferences, "Java -> Editor -> Save actions", you can make Eclipse to automatically format your file when you save it, so your code is always correctly indented !


The automatic formatting of Eclipse great no question.
If your comments are reformatted depends on what comment type and how you already have inserted line breaks.
Writing for example one very long line comment starting with // will be broken down by the formatter into multiple lines.
However you later edit the formatted lines - e.g. delete parts of it the formatter will leave them as they are. Only over-long lines will be changed.
Just in difference to block comments like this: /* comment */
Those comments will always be re-formatted in case the line is too short or too long.


If you want to format your header comment, you have to check Enable header comment formatting - that was the trick for me.
Obviously, to use this, you must create new formatter profile.

Related

how to freely format comments in cc-mode

I'm quite new to cc-mode and I'd like to configure it to allow me to freely format and use tabs in multiline comments. This is important to me because I want to use cog.py in my source file and need to be able to format the python source in the comment correctly. I'd be ok with comments not beeing autoindented at all, however I'd like to keep auto indenting the rest of the source code.
Example:
...
/*
[[[cog
import cog
for x in ['a','b','c']:
>cog.outl(x)
]]]
*/
...
In the line marked with > I'd like to press TAB to indent the line. cc-mode simply does nothing at all if i do so. I could use spaces there (which is inconvenient) but every (semi-)automatic re-indentation of this block would cause the spaces to vanish and therefore the python code to be incorrectly indented (which is what happens if i happen to press tab somewhere on this line after indenting it with spaces).
I tried to start emacs without my .init to be sure this is default behavior and not modified by my configuration so far. I've done google searches and read the documentation of the cc-mode variables / functions I stumbled upon (cc-mode online docs) while searching for a solution (i.e. c-indent-comments-syntactically-p, c-indent-command, c-tab-always-indent,...) but none of these seemed to solve my question.
EDIT1:
Thanks to abo-abo's idea of a "multi-major-mode" setup i've stumbled upon mmm-mode and have set up automatic switching to python mode for a cog section, which fixes most of my problems.
The only remaining problem is reindenting the whole file or a region containing a cog section. Can I somehow tell cc-mode to not change anything in comments while reindenting the file? mmm-mode + that would be a perfect solution for me.

You can use M-i to force a tab indent on the lines that you want, so you can use it to indent your comments.
You can also change your comments to use // instead. Just select your python code snippet, and do M-x comment-region:
// def foo(x):
// print 'hi'
Then the autoindent won't mess up your indentation.

Eclipse automated code formation and Hyperlinks

I'm a big fan of the automated code formation (STRG + SHIFT + F) from eclipse. It makes your code so much more readable. However, now that I'm comenting my code, I'm getting the problem with Hyperlinks. Code formation adds line breaks anywhere in your code, so if you have e.g. a very long hyperlink it breaks into multiple lines and makes it unresolvable :(
Is there a way that eclipse doesn't format specific comment parts like Hyperlinks?
Regards,
Stefan

Code formating doesn't put line breaks in links inside a tags:
<a href=
"http://www.example.com/very-long-url">Example</a>
There is a line break just after the href=, so it may look ugly in a paragraph. Enclosing urls in <tt> tags prevents line breaks, but the url won't be a clickable link. Combine both and you get hyperlinks without line breaks. If they exceed the maximum line length, they will start on a new line though.
<tt>Example</tt>
There is also //#formatter:off to disable formatting for the following lines and //#formatter:on to enable it again.

I don't think there is any way from setting that up in the menu. The workaround is to disable block or line comment formatting in the formatter profile:
Window -> Preferences -> Java -> Code Style -> Formatter -> Edit -> tab Comments
As pointed out by Kheldar, you can always customise/extend the Java Codeformatter using the extension point, but that's probably not a one hour job for someone unfamiliar with the JDT.
Please indicate, if you need any assistance coding an extension for the formatter.

Eclipse-like comment formatting in IntelliJ IDEA?

In Eclipse, I can format comments by selecting them and pressing Shift + Ctrl + F. For example, when I select a method comment like this:
/**
* This method
* does some stuff.
*/
and press Shift + Ctrl + F, Eclipse automatically wraps it:
/**
* This method does some stuff.
*/
Is there anything comparable to this in IDEA?
EDIT: To clarify, I'm looking for comment formatting that also breaks lines that are too long into multiple lines.

The closest thing that you can get is Edit | Join Lines (Ctrl+Shift+J). You have to select the lines you want to join first.
To wrap long comments enable Settings | Code Style | JavaDoc | Wrap at right margin.

For Javadoc comments, you want to make sure the "Wrap at right margin" setting is checked. See Code Style > JavaDoc, under "Other". However, this setting only seems to take effect when you reformat the whole file, since a reformat of just the Javadoc (i.e., select the Javadoc, then do a Code (menu) > Reformat Code... or CtrlAltL) that exceeds the right margin doesn't force it to wrap. If I reformat the entire file, then it wraps at the margin as expected.
This seems like a bug (though one that doesn't seem to have been reported), since if you have to set the "Ensure right margin is not exceeded" checked, then selecting the Javadoc text and doing a reformat code does indeed wrap the lines. This setting is in Settings > Code Style > Wrapping and Braces. You can also do a search in the Settings dialog for "ensure right margin".
You'll still have to manually join the lines using CtrlShiftJ
This might be worthy of an improvement request to JetBrains.

Existing comment will be reformatted when you do "Reformat Code" (⌥⌘L in Mac).

#kghastie uncovered the key.
Steps:
Set the Code Style > Java > JavaDoc > Wrap at right margin setting.
Select the full lines of the entire JavaDoc comment.
Reformat Code (Ctrl-Alt-L or ⌥⌘L).
Lesser alternative:
Set the Code Style > Java > JavaDoc > Wrap at right margin setting and the Code Style > Java > Wrapping and Braces > Ensure right margin is not exceeded setting.
Select some text within a JavaDoc comment.
Join Lines (Ctrl-Shift-J) followed by reformat Code (Ctrl-Alt-L or ⌥⌘L).
Beware: This will leave all the selected lines joined even where you had paragraph breaks (<p/> or \n\n).

The JetBrains plugin Wrap to Column is made for this:
From the overview:
Wraps text to the specified column width. Similar to the Emacs command 'Fill Paragraph' and Vim's gq (format lines) command. This is a replacement for the native Intellij Fill Paragraph command, which doesn't work quite how I need it to.
This plugin provies two IDE actions:
Wrap Line to Column: Wraps selected text or the current line if no text is selected. This is useful for IdeaVim users who wish to pair the command with motions like vip (select current paragraph).
Wrap Paragraph to Column: Wraps the paragraph (multiple lines) in which the cursor appears. No selection is needed, and will be ignored.

I'm using IntelliJ 14 on a Mac, which has a Fill Paragraph command. Access it via the awesome universal Command-Shift-A action search feature. Works like a charm!

This is a hack, not a really good solution, but if you have a block of code that you want formatted like this and it's in serious need of auto format, because it's going over the 80 line max, or it's just unreadable...
You can just put if ("foo" == "bar") { on top of whatever you want formatted, and then and the} at the bottom of the if statement, to close it, and voila, your code should auto-indent, auto format, etc... Then take it out, highlight all of what you just formatted and press SHIFT+TAB to move it back 4 spaces and remove the dummy if statement

Word-wrapping comments in Netbeans

/*
*
* This is a long comment. I broke it into lines, but that made it impossible to edit without screwing up the formatting. Is there a way to make Netbeans add line breaks automatically?
*
*/
Reads: This is a long comment. I broke it into lines, but that made it impossible to edit without screwing up the formatting. Is there a way to make Netbeans add line breaks automatically?

As for today, the current NetBeans (7.3) word-wraps comments with some nice available extra options when formatting. NB: Unfortunately, this is currently only available for the Java language.
You can launch the formatter with the context menu→Format, or if you did not change the standard shortcuts, Alt+Shift+F should do.
To access the corresponding configuration: Tools → Options → Editor → Formatting; Language: Java; Category: Comments

Your IDE won't format the comment for you. You will have to do it by hand. Yes, that means you have to re-format it once you add new words to it.

If you press Enter to insert a new line, NetBeans will simply extend the docblock formatting - it won't break anything. There's also a useful option in the Preferences to display a line in the right margin, so you know when to break a line. It's in:
Tools > Options > Editor > Formatting > Right Margin
Is this what you're looking for?

Go to tools->options->editor->formatting
find line wrap and choose one the wrapping style you desire,there are two options : afterword and anywhere.
and then click OK! :D
nb : I suggest you to choose afterword

How do you display code snippets in MS Word preserving format and syntax highlighting?

Does anyone know a way to display code in Microsoft Word documents that preserves coloring and formatting? Preferably, the method would also be unobtrusive and easy to update.
I have tried to include code as regular text which looks awful and gets in the way when editing regular text. I have also tried inserting objects, a WordPad document and Text Box, into the document then putting the code inside those objects. The code looks much better and is easier to avoid while editing the rest of the text. However, these objects can only span one page which makes editing a nightmare when several pages of code need to be added.
Lastly, I know that there are much better editors/formats that have no problem handling this but I am stuck working with MS word.

Here is the best way, for me, to add code inside word:
Go to Insert tab, Text section, click Object button (it's on the right)
Choose OpenDocument Text which will open a new embedded word document
Copy and paste your code from Visual Studio / Eclipse inside this embedded word page
Save and close
Advantages
The result looks very nice. Here are the advantages of this method:
The code keeps its original layout and colors
The code is separated from the rest of the document, as if it was a picture or a chart
Spelling errors won't be highlighted in the code (this is cool !)
And it takes only few seconds.

Download and install Notepad++ and do the following:
Paste your code in the window;
Select the programming language from the language menu;
Select the text to copy;
Right click and select Plugin commands -> Copy Text with Syntax Highlighting;
Paste it into MS Word and you are good to go!
Update 29/06/2013:
Notepad++ has a plugin called "NppExport" (comes pre-installed) that allows you to copy to RTF, HTML and ALL. It permits dozens of languages, whereas the aforementioned IDEs are limited to a handful each (without other plug-ins).
I use Copy all formats to clipboard and "paste as HTML" in MS word.

After reading a lot of related answers, I came across my own solution, which for me is the most suitable one.
Result looks like this:
As you can see, it is the same syntax highlighting like on Stack Overflow which is quite awesome.
Steps to reproduce:
on Stack Overflow
Goto Ask Question (preferably with Chrome)
Paste Code and add a language tag (e.g. Java) to get syntax hightlighting
Copy code from preview
in Word
Insert > Table > 1x1
Paste code (you may need to use Paste Special... > Formatted Text (RTF) from the Edit menu to not lose the syntax hilighting)
Table Design > Borders > No Border
Select code > Edit > Find > Replace
Search Document ^p (Paragraph Mark)
Replace With ^l (Manual Line Break)
(This is required to remove the gaps between some lines)
Select code again > Review > Language > check "Do not check spelling or grammar"
Finally add a caption using References > Insert Caption > New Label > name it "Listing" or sth
Sample code thanks to this guy

There is a nice Online Tool for that : https://www.troye.io/planetb/
Just copy the generated code and paste it into your word editing software. So far I've tried it on MS Word and WPS Writer, works really well.
Doesn't play nice with Firefox but works just fine on Chrome (and IE too, but who wants to use that).
One of the main benefits is that, unlike the Code Format Add-In for Word, it does NOT mess with your code, and respects various languages' syntax.
I tried many other options offered in other answers but I found this one to be the most efficient (quick and really effective).
There is also another online tool quoted in another answer (markup.su) but I find the planetB output more elegant (although less versatile).
Input :
Output :

I type my code in Visual Studio, and then copy-paste into word. it preserves the colors.

When I've done this, I've made extensive use of styles. It helps a lot.
What I do is create a paragraph style (perhaps called "Code Example" or something like that) which uses a monospaced font, carefully chosen tabs, a very light grey background, a thin black border above and below (that helps visibility a lot) and with spelling turned off. I also make sure that inter-line and inter-paragraph spacing are set right. I then create additional character styles on top (e.g., "Comment", "String", "Keyword", "Function Name Decl", "Variable Name Decl") which I layer on top; those set the color and whether the text is bold/italic. It's then pretty simple to go through and mark up a pasted example as being code and have it come out looking really good, and this is works well for short snippets. Long chunks of code probably should not normally be in something that's going to go on a dead tree. :-)
An advantage of doing it this way is that it is easy to adapt to whatever code you're doing; you don't have to rely on some IDE to figure out whatever is going on for you. (The main problem? Printed pages typically aren't as wide as editor windows so wrapping will suck...)

Maybe this is overly simple, but have you tried pasting in your code and setting the font on it to Courier New?

Try defining a style called 'code' and make it use a small fixed width font, it should look better then.
Use CTRL+SPACEBAR to reset style.

If you are using Sublime Text, you can copy the code from Sublime to MS Word preserving the syntax highlighting.
Install the package called SublimeHighlight.
In Sublime, using your cursor, select the code you want to copy, right click it, select 'copy as rtf', and paste into MS Word.

I'm using Easy Code Formatter. It's also an Office add-in. It allows you to select the coding style / and has a quick formatting button. Pretty neat.

In case you're like me and are too lazy or in a hurry and don't want to download additional software, you can use http://markup.su/highlighter/. It's very straight forward and supports several highlight themes and many programming languages. In my case I was using Visual Studio Code, which doesn't allow copying with format due to CSS involved in styling (as reported here).
Copy the text from the Preview box and then in Word go to Insert -> Textbox, paste the Preview from the website, highlight all the text, and then disable spell checking for that textbox.
This is what the code looks like finally.

The best way I found is by using the table.
Create a table with 1x1. Then copy the code and paste it.
If you're using the desktop app then it will inherit the code editor theme color and paste it accordingly, else you can change the table style to any color.
UPDATE ------------------
From Word 2021, you can directly paste the code and it will preserve the formatting. No need to create the table.
Thank you #RdC1965 for mentioning this.

This is a bit indirect, but it works very nicely. Get LiveWriter and install this plugin:
http://lvildosola.blogspot.com/2007/02/code-snippet-plugin-for-windows-live.html
Insert your code using the plugin into a blog post. Select all and copy it to Word.
It looks great and can include line numbers. It also spans pages decently.
HTH
Colby Africa

Vim has a nifty feature that converts code to HTML format preserving syntax highlighting, font style, background color and even line numbers. Run :TOhtml and vim creates a new buffer containing html markup.
Next, open this html file in a web browser and copy/paste whatever it rendered to Word. Vim tips wiki has more information.

In my experience copy-paste from eclipse and Notepad++ works directly with word.
For some reason I had a problem with a file that didn't preserve coloring. I made a new .java file, copy-paste code to that, then copy-paste to word and it worked...
As the other guys said, create a new paragraph style. What I do is use mono-spaced font like courier new, small size close to 8px for fonts, single spaced with no space between paragraphs, make tab stops small (0.5cm,1cm,..,5cm), put a simple line border around the text and disable grammar checks. That way i achieved the line braking of eclipse so I don't have to do anything more.
Hope I helped ;)

This is the simplest approach I follow. Consider I want to paste java code.
I paste the code here so that spaces, tabs and flower brackets are neatly formated http://www.tutorialspoint.com/online_java_formatter.htm
Then I paste the code got from step 1 here so that the colors, fonts are added to the code http://markup.su/highlighter/
Then paste the preview code got from step 2 to the MS word. Finally it will look like this

You can use VS code to keep code format and highlighting. Directly copy and paste code from VS.

you can simply use this Add-in on any office program.
Go to insert tab, then Get Add-ins, and search for Easy Syntax Highlighter
It supports
185 languages and 89 themes.
Automatic language detection.
Multi-language code highlighting.

Use a monospaced font like Lucida Console, which comes with Windows. If you cut/paste from Visual Studio or something that supports syntax highlighting, you can often preserve the colour scheme of the syntax highlighter.

Answer for people trying to resolve this issue in 2019:
Most answers to this question are outdated by now. I wish there was a way to reinspect old questions and answers every now and then!
The method I found for this question that works with Office 365 and its associated programs can be found here.

I'm using Word 2010 and I like copying and paste from a github gist. Just remember to keep source formatting!
I then change the font to DejaVu Sans Mono.
You can opt to copy with or without the numbering.

Copying into Eclipse and paste it in Word is also another option.

You can also use SciTE to paste code if you don't want to install heavy IDEs and then download plugins for all the code you're making. Simply choose your language from the language menu, type your code, high-light code, select Edit->Copy as RTF, paste into Word with formatting (default paste).
SciTE supports the following languages but probably has support for others: Abaqus*, Ada, ANS.1 MIB definition files*, APDL, Assembler (NASM, MASM), Asymptote*, AutoIt*, Avenue*, Batch files (MS-DOS), Baan*, Bash*, BlitzBasic*, Bullant*, C/C++/C#, Clarion, cmake*, conf (Apache), CSound, CSS*, D, diff files*, E-Script*, Eiffel*, Erlang*, Flagship (Clipper / XBase), Flash (ActionScript), Fortran*, Forth*, GAP*, Gettext, Haskell, HTML*, HTML with embedded JavaScript, VBScript, PHP and ASP*, Gui4Cli*, IDL - both MSIDL and XPIDL*, INI, properties* and similar, InnoSetup*, Java*, JavaScript*, LISP*, LOT*, Lout*, Lua*, Make, Matlab*, Metapost*, MMIXAL, MSSQL, nnCron, NSIS*, Objective Caml*, Opal, Octave*, Pascal/Delphi*, Perl, most of it except for some ambiguous cases*, PL/M*, Progress*, PostScript*, POV-Ray*, PowerBasic*, PowerShell*, PureBasic*, Python*, R*, Rebol*, Ruby*, Scheme*, scriptol*, Specman E*, Spice, Smalltalk, SQL and PLSQL, TADS3*, TeX and LaTeX, Tcl/Tk*, VB and VBScript*, Verilog*, VHDL*, XML*, YAML*.

If you are using Intellij IDEA, just copy the code from the IDE and paste it in the word document.

A web site for coloration with lots of languages.
http://hilite.me/
You can host one yourself since it is open source. The code is on github.

There really isn't a clean way to do it, and it could still look fishy based on your exact style settings.
What you could try to do is to first run a code-to-HTML conversion (there are many programs that do that), and then try to open up the HTML file with word, that might hopefully provide you with the formatted and pretty code, and then copy and paste it into your document.

I was also looking for it and ended up creating something for my code display.
Here's a good way:
Create a rectangular form and place your text inside.
Change the font to Consolas and size ~10.
Change the text font to gray near-black (gray 25%, darker 75%)
Use darker colors to highlight your text if needed and choose one to be the contour.

I have created an easier method using tables, as they are easier to create, manage, and more consistent (with the possibility to save the table's style inside the document itself), but I couldn't find a better way for code colouring scheme, sorry for that.
Steps:
Create a 3x3 table.
Select the table, and make its borders invisible ("No Borders" option), and activate "View Gridlines" option.
Make the adjustments to cells' spacing and columns' widths to get the desired aspect. (You will have to get in "Table Properties" for fine tuning).
Create a "Paragraph Style" with the name of "Code" just for your code snippets (as mentioned in https://stackoverflow.com/a/25092977/8533804)
Create another "Paragraph Style" with the name of "Code_numberline" that will be based upon the previous created style, but this you will add a numbering line in its definition (this will automate line numbering).
Apply "Code_numberline" to the first column, and "Code" to the 3 column.
Add a fill in the middle column.
Save that table style and enjoy!

The best presentation for code in documents is in a fixed-width font (as it should appear in an IDE), with either a faint, shaded background or a light border to distinguish the block from other text.

If its Java source code copy it to Visual Studio and then copy it back to Word.