The Babel Package provides another alternative to implementing a language service in Visual Studio. The Babel Package is an unmanaged framework that was created using Automation. Using Babel, you get support for the following features:
Syntax highlighting (including custom colors)
Error markers (red wavy underlines)
Block comments
Automatic brace matching
Statement completion
Member lists
Tip information (quick information)
Method tips
Autos window support in the Debugger
The following illustration shows how the Babel package is situated in relation to Visual Studio and the Babel language services. The Babel Package provides a generic language service by implementing the language service interfaces provided in Visual Studio. To customize the language service provided by the Babel Package, you can provide your own custom IBabelService implementation using your existing compiler. For more information, see Implementing the IBabelService Interface. Another option is to use the default implementation of IBabelService and provide a lexical and grammar specification for your parser using lex and yacc. For more information, see Using the Default Babel Implementation.
Babel overview
.gif "Babel Overview")
For either option, you additionally need to implement an expression evaluator if you want to provide support for the Autos window. For more information, see Providing Autos Window Support for Babel.