Is it possible to make a notebook behave like text editor such as Sublime Text with regard to code formatting?

Question

Can Mathematica, natively or otherwise, behave more like a conventional text editing tool such as Sublime Text or Notepad++ when it comes to code formatting and syntax highlighting?

I have seen some users use Mathematica through power shell or terminal – I don't want to do this as it seems to defeat the instant feedback in terms of plotting one gets in a Notebook, but formatting code in the more traditional way would be nice.

At the moment I put everything in code blocks (Alt + 8) which mostly does the trick. There also exist packages in Sublime Text that allow syntax highlighting and code formatting, but then you have to copy your text over to a Mathematica Notebook – tedious!

Here is an example of Sublime Text with Wolfram Language syntax highlighting, I'm not necessarily looking for this exact style, and I would prefer to be able to keep the ability of working in Mathematica rather than coding in one environment an execute in another:

Answer 1

To be honest, I still don't know what you're looking for since 90% of what is in your screenshot is already in Mathematica, but if you want to customize, here's something that'll do that on a single Notebook:

SetOptions[
 EvaluationNotebook[],
 With[
  {
   operatorStyle = {FontColor -> GrayLevel[.3]},
   commandStyle = {FontColor -> Orange},
   blockStyle = {FontWeight -> Bold},
   typeStyle = {FontColor -> Hue[.5 , .5, .5]},
   constStyle = {FontColor -> Hue[.1 , 1, .6]},
   globalStyle = {FontColor -> Pink},
   systemStyle = {FontColor -> Black},
   customSymbolStyle = {FontColor -> Hue[.5 , .7, .2]},
   codeStyle = {
     TabFilling -> StringRepeat[" ", 11] <> "|",
     TabSpacings -> 2,
     InitializationCell -> False
     }
   },
  {
   StyleDefinitions ->
    Notebook[{
      Cell[StyleData[StyleDefinitions -> "Default.nb"]],
      Cell[StyleData["OperatorStyle"], Sequence @@ operatorStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["CommandStyle"], Sequence @@ commandStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["BlockStyle"], Sequence @@ blockStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["TypeStyle"], Sequence @@ typeStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["ConstantStyle"], Sequence @@ constStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["GlobalStyle"], Sequence @@ globalStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["SystemStyle"], Sequence @@ systemStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["CustomSymbolStyle"], Sequence @@ customSymbolStyle],
      Cell[StyleData["Code"], Sequence @@ codeStyle]
      }],
   AutoStyleOptions ->
    {
     "FunctionLocalVariableStyle" -> {FontColor -> Blue},
     "LocalVariableStyle" -> {FontColor -> Purple},
     "PatternVariableStyle" -> {FontColor -> Darker@Green, 
       FontSlant -> "Italic"},
     "SymbolContextStyles" -> {
       "System`" -> "SystemStyle",
       "Global`" -> "GlobalStyle",
       Automatic -> "CustomSymbolStyle"
       }
     },
   AutoStyleWords -> {
     "@" -> "OperatorStyle", "//" -> "OperatorStyle", "~" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     ";" -> "OperatorStyle", "," -> "OperatorStyle", "-" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "+" -> "OperatorStyle", "/" -> "OperatorStyle", "*" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "(" -> "OperatorStyle", ")" -> "OperatorStyle", "[" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "]" -> "OperatorStyle", "{" -> "OperatorStyle", "}" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "[[" -> "OperatorStyle", "]]" -> "OperatorStyle", "<" -> "OperatorStyle",
      ">" -> "OperatorStyle", ":" -> "OperatorStyle", "::" -> "OperatorStyle",
      "." -> "OperatorStyle", ".." -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "..." -> "OperatorStyle", "_" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "__" -> "OperatorStyle", "___" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "?" -> "OperatorStyle", "&" -> "OperatorStyle", "&&" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "~~" -> "OperatorStyle", "\[Rule]" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "\[RuleDelayed]" -> "OperatorStyle", "->" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     ":>" -> "OperatorStyle", "|" -> "OperatorStyle", ":=" -> "OperatorStyle",
      "^:=" -> "OperatorStyle", "/:" -> "OperatorStyle", 
     "/;" -> "OperatorStyle",
     "Return" -> "CommandStyle", "Break" -> "CommandStyle", 
     "DialogReturn" -> "CommandStyle", "Goto" -> "CommandStyle", 
     "Throw" -> "CommandStyle", "Catch" -> "CommandStyle", 
     "Message" -> "CommandStyle", "Print" -> "CommandStyle", 
     "Assert" -> "CommandStyle", "Begin" -> "CommandStyle", 
     "BeginPackage" -> "CommandStyle", "End" -> "CommandStyle", 
     "EndPackage" -> "CommandStyle",
     "With" -> "BlockStyle", "Module" -> "BlockStyle", 
     "Block" -> "BlockStyle", "If" -> "BlockStyle", "Switch" -> "BlockStyle", 
     "Which" -> "BlockStyle", "Do" -> "BlockStyle", "Table" -> "BlockStyle", 
     "For" -> "BlockStyle", "While" -> "BlockStyle", 
     "Replace" -> "BlockStyle", "ReplaceAll" -> "BlockStyle", 
     "ReplaceRepeated" -> "BlockStyle", "ReplacePart" -> "BlockStyle", 
     "Map" -> "BlockStyle", "MapIndexed" -> "BlockStyle", 
     "MapThread" -> "BlockStyle", "Entity" -> "TypeStyle", 
     "Quantity" -> "TypeStyle", "ChannelObject" -> "TypeStyle", 
     "CloudObject" -> "TypeStyle", "CloudExpression" -> "TypeStyle", 
     "CellObject" -> "TypeStyle", "Notebook" -> "TypeStyle", 
     "Cell" -> "TypeStyle", "ResourceObject" -> "TypeStyle", 
     "LocalObject" -> "TypeStyle", "FormObject" -> "TypeStyle", 
     "$Failed" -> "ConstantStyle", "False" -> "ConstantStyle", 
     "True" -> "ConstantStyle", "$Canceled" -> "ConstantStyle", 
     "All" -> "ConstantStyle"
     }
   }
  ]
 ]

This is based off of something I do for my own stuff, but there I put all of this in a SyntaxHighlighting.nb stylesheet and then link off of that. That way if you just want to make a minor adjustment to one style, you can only change that one piece. Here's a sample for you to work from. Here's an example of a stylesheet deriving from it.

I'd recommend that flow to you, moving forward, but my guess is you aren't familiar with working with Mathematica stylesheets, so the function above will get you started for for some on-the-fly testing.