Hello folks! I've been lurking for some 4-5 months now and figure it's time to post. To WitchLord et all - AngelScript is brilliant! I can't tell you how exciting it's been to use.

Long post; edited for brevity but I had to include a lot of rationale too. Context: I'm an enthusiast programmer for some 8 years, gearing up for a tech college program (building maintenance doesn't cut it anymore ) and want to have portfolio material part way through the course if at all possible.
Question #1: Is anyone aware of a language parser that may not be perfect but weighs in under 5,000 - 10,000 lines? My brain's already packed, and ANTLR seems overkill.
Question #2: If nobody is aware of #1, would the approach I've outlined below seem to be the right one?
Question #3: Would anybody actually like to use this software? I hope the editor & my engine's binding methods would make for a great contribution, as I'd love to give back in some way. Trying to decide where to spend my time though!

I'm writing a cross-platform 2D game/GUI engine. In the process of writing scripts the most WYSIWYG editor I've found is Programmer's Notepad. My needs quickly outgrew what it provides. I realize 2D engines are very passé, so my goal has been to create a set of tools that allow complete novices to get a serious jump start on programming.

As such, I need to write an IDE and have completed a little mock-up in C# (see imperfect screenshot). Sheer simplicity is the main goal, with autocompletion being the lofty target. I'm sticking with C# because it makes my life easier and I can port to Mono later without massive headaches.

All the classes in the C++ engine implement a static method allowing me to bind everything quick & clean inside main(). After everything is bound and the scripts compile, a definition file is written containing symbols the binder & AngelScript are aware of. A snippet of this file:

Operator(>>>)
StatementEnd(
Operator(,)
BlockStart({)
Var(GameInfo,Game)
Var(ConfigFile,Configuration)
Var(AnimationManager,Animations)
class(WindowManager)
Method(void,Run,)
Method(void,Start,)
Method(void,Render,)
Method(void,End,)
endclass()

class(LayerManager)
Method(Layer@,Create,)
Method(void,Destroy,Layer@ which)
endclass()


Using some string search & regex kludges I can get syntax highlighting working fairly easily using this data alone. The big problem comes in when considering speed of (1) scanning script files to create symbols & (2) autocompletion. I'm currently splitting each script file into tokens (designated with start/end positions and retrieved with properties) and assigning them a loose type to start (function, variable, primitive, class, etc). This lets me use a TokenBrowser to jump around a pre-split file to resolve type names and determine which block I'm in, etc. Down the road, it should allow for relatively fast while-you-type insertions into the token list to provide an experience similar to what Visual Studio is capable of.

Leading to Question #4: In essence, I'm trying to decide whether I'm going about this all wrong. If the general opinion is that this is a redundant idea that will land 2 downloads, nothing to give back to AS, and strange glances from future employers, I'll be off to the next thing. If there's even a glimmer of hope for such a tool's use I'll keep plugging away though! Any advice is welcome.

I would like to see that happen, although I have found a reasonable substitute. See http://www.gamedev.net/topic/594639-symbols-table-andor-syntax-tree/page__view__findpost__p__4806355

Some screens with autocompletion and code definition lookup:
[attachment=2525:vcp.png]
[attachment=2526:vcp2.png]

@ TheAtom: Aye! The target people who may use my little system are very unlikely to have Visual Studio. Hence putting in the effort .
@ virious: In my lurkings I've seen plenty of your posts - glad to hear this is your goal too! Out of curiosity, what language are you developing in? Are you using a similar approach?
@ the unspoken: Still messing with this as time permits.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

DescenderX: so far the only version of MSVC that I tried and where it worked is 2008 Express, which is available for free - if that's what you meant. I also explored other ways of creating (proper) IDE using MSVS SDK (keywords: isolated shell, irony language parser), but I was unable to find MSVS extension that provides Intellisense for some C-like language, something that could be used as a base for AS Intellisense support. I don't feel like having the time to develop this from scratch (and there's lot to learn on the way).