gate-colors

Rudimentary VSCode extension to add syntax highlighting to GATE macro files (.mac). Recommended for use with the Dark+ color theme, available by default in VSCode.

About GATE

GATE is a wrapper of the popular Monte Carlo simulation code GEANT4 that uses programmatic macro file inputs to offer a more user friendly experience. It is particularly designed with medical imaging simulations in mind. More information can be found here:

https://opengate.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html

Features

• Provides basic syntax highlighting compatible with default VSCode color themes:
  • Comments
  • Constants, numbers, and materials
  • Units
  • Top-level Gate tree commands (world, systems, geometry, etc.)
  • User-defined variables (e.g. names of volumes)
  • User-defined file inputs and outputs
  • High-level structural keywords (/name, /insert, /attach)
  • High-level flow keywords (initialize, disable, start)
• Additionally, supports line- and multi-line commenting with VSCode's comment keybind.

Installation

Please refer to vsc-extension-quickstart.md for detailed instructions.

To install locally:

• (Untested) Download / clone this repository into the <user home>/.vscode/extensions folder and restart Code.

To debug or test:

• Download / clone this repository and open in VSCode.
• Press F5 to open a new window with your extension loaded.
• .mac files opened in the new window will have the syntax highlighting applied.

Changing your color theme in VSCode

The default dark-mode color theme in VSCode is Dark (Visual Studio). This does not include quite as many color scopes as some of the others. We highly recommend using Dark+ with this extension.

You can change your color theme in VSCode with File > Preferences > Theme > Color Theme, or press Ctrl-Shift-P and search for Preferences > Color Theme.

Known Issues

• All materials and units are manually hard-coded. Syntax highlighting of user-defined materials and units is not currently available.
• Semantic highlighting (https://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/semantic-highlight-guide) is not innately included and will overwrite any of the syntax highlighting used here.
  • The current implementation of variable highlighing (/gate/myVolumenName/) is a hacky way of creating a semantic highlighting illusion. In fact, any "secondary" item after gate will be highlighted.

Release Notes

1.0.0

• (2023/10/09) Initial release