New Parser/highlighter howto

["Richard F Weber" <rfweber@link.com>]

Ok, granted I'm a bit new to Source navigator and hacking on the API, 
but here it goes. 

I'm working on creating an Ada Parser/Highlighter.  I know another 
company (CAS I think) is supposed to have an Ada parser, but I've 
contacted them on numerous occasions by phone & e-mail and they don't 
seem to want to respond.  So, as a result, I'm looking to hack out an 
Ada parser on my own.

I've found the grammer9x.y & lexer9x.l files from a mirror of the 
falls-church Ada site to give a basic start as to how to parse out Ada.  
Now I'm just trying to work on actually getting something working.

So my question is:

1) How does the color highlighter exactly work for SN?  Does it use the 
parser to identify what is a comment, what is a function, etc?  Or do I 
have to code the syntax checking in separately (ala VIM)

2) Testing parser offline.  Is there a way to test the parser offline to 
make sure the database is getting what I think it's getting? 

I've got the lex code checking and handling comments right now, but the 
syntax highlighter doesn't highlight the right code as a comment.  So 
I'm not sure if I'm doing this stuff right.  Any pointers would be very 
much appreciated. 

I've kind of looked at the chill & python lexer's, but they seem a bit 
advanced for me.  Of course, if there's a perl module that interfaces 
with the SN API calls I could probobally whip something out quicker (but 
I'm not sure how to make Perl interface with C <sigh>)

Thanks in advance.

--Rich