VSCode Natural Language Client

Language Client implementation for Natural Language Server (natls).

To see features that currently work, have a look over at the natls documentation.

Prerequisites

The Language Server needs to find a file called .natural within the Natural project folder which configures the libraries and step lib relationships.

The expected structure looks like this:

ProjectDir
|- .natural
|- Natural-Libraries/

NaturalONE generates a .natural file if you press Store new defaults within the properties of a project.

All thats needed from the .natural file are the <LibrarySteplib> entries, e.g.:

<LibrarySteplib>
	<LibrarySteplibName>LIBONE</LibrarySteplibName>
	<LibrarySteplibNSV>LIBONE</LibrarySteplibNSV>
	<LibrarySteplibExtensions>0;</LibrarySteplibExtensions>
</LibrarySteplib>
<LibrarySteplib>
	<LibrarySteplibName>LIBTWO</LibrarySteplibName>
	<LibrarySteplibNSV>LIBONE</LibrarySteplibNSV>
	<LibrarySteplibExtensions>1;LIBTWO[-1,-1];</LibrarySteplibExtensions>
</LibrarySteplib>

Versioning

Although this extension does have three numerics in its version number, it doesn't use semantic versioning.

The first two digits (e.g. 0.2) belong to the natls version it is bundled with. The last digit is used for any bugfix or enhancement that was done during the period of that natls version.

Settings

The Language Server Configuration can be configured with the same keys they're specified in in the linked documentation. E.g. setting "natls.completion.qualify": true, in your VSCode settings.json results in the Language Server always completing variables fully qualified where applicable.

Additional features

Find and insert constant

You can find a Natural: Insert Constant command in the command palette.

This command will open a quick pick popup with all CONST variables from LDAs that are reachable from your current natural file.

You can search through the variable name, LDA name or constant value in the popup. Pressing return inserts the constant into the editor.

Nesting level gutters

The editor will show a gutter line for the main body (orange) and subroutine bodies (teal) to indicate if a statement is within a subroutine or the main code.

This is helpful, because you can write statements in the main body of a module after defining subroutines.

This can be enabled with "natls.gutter.body": true.

The config natls.gutter.topLevelOnly (default true) configures if only the top level statements should have a gutter. To resemble the configuration of the screenshot, this has to be set to false.