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Arno-NL's avatar
Arno-NL
Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
1 day ago

Quartus Prime 25.1 Lite - Display Issues

Dear Altera / Intel,

I have noted a large obstruction while trying to work with the latest version of Quartus Prime Lite. I have made two screenshots that show the display issues I am having with this version. They are two-fold:

  1. The mega-wizard plugin manager dialog for the ALT_PLL megafunction: All "windows-controls" panels that house the controls for the various wizard pages are set to transparent on my system. All controls of all wizard pages are visible and make it near impossible to work with for me. The first screenshot says it all.
  2. The second issue is syntax-highlighting for the Verilog HDL. I've followed developments in this area for years and as a software developer, for visual recognition performance I do rely on syntax-highlighting a great deal. Since version 23 this seems to have gone fubar. It's the 2nd screenshot.

When it comes to the syntax highlighting I noted that now port identifiers are now regarded HDL key words which I think they are not as they are still identifiers. The word "port" for as far as I can remember is not a Verilog keyword either (unlike "modport"). Further, it's also parameter/constant identifiers that are regarded keywords which they are not. Funny though is that the parameter identifier must be full caps to be regarded a keyword. (the word "low" in the screenshort, contary to "HIGH").

I would love to see the syntax highlighting be addressed and have this work fluently if possible; too detailed a high-light may be too hard to add or require too much work, I don't know. If I am to supply a wish-list it would be short:

  • Syntax highlighting as of Quartus 20.1.1 as a basis
  • Port highlighting with its own element "Verilog Port Identifier" is indeed useful and nice. 

That's it. Parameters / constants are no specific desire, but if you wish to colorize these, please try to be consistent and not let this be case sensitive as it is now.

And an obligatory disclaimer: It may be possible all of this works like fine on everyone else's systems and it's just me (lol). For what its worth, I use an old though established components custom PC. (i7 920, Foxconn bloodrage board and an Asus RTX2060 TUF as its main components, all with drivers up to date and the CPU and board still supported by windows 10.

Thanks in advance!
Arno 

 

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Hdl

5 Replies

  • FvM's avatar
    FvM
    Icon for Super Contributor rankSuper Contributor
    1 day ago

    Hello,

    Quartus V25.1 corrupted altpll GUI is a known bug, we are yet waiting for a fix. See e.g. ALT PLL GUI MESSDED UP ON INVOCATION | Altera Community

    Regarding Prime text editor Verilog syntax highlighting, I see change starting with Quartus Prime Std. V21.1 (don't have presently 20.1 installed) and definitely not in V19.1. I wonder why it was done, is it intentional at all? I agree there should be fallback or configuration option.

    Regards
    Frank  

    • Arno-NL's avatar
      Arno-NL
      Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
      1 day ago

      Hello,

      Thanks for your comment. I looked in this forum and didn't find anything about the GUI garble in this Quartus Prime sub forum. Am I right you are using the standard/pro version of Quartus? I know the standard version is now at 25.3 and I have no idea whether this GUI bug has been fixed in that version. Maybe you can tell? As for a fix for the Lite version, yeah I'll have to wait. I'm not hinging on PLL configuration as I could do that with an older version. Thanks once more,

      Arno.

      • sstrell's avatar
        sstrell
        Icon for Super Contributor rankSuper Contributor
        1 day ago

        Standard and Lite are basically the same code base and they are at 25.1, not 25.3.  The link Frank provided goes into this, and there have been a number of other posts about this recently.

  • Arno-NL's avatar
    Arno-NL
    Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
    1 day ago

    I'm sorry I can not see an edit option for the opening-post so I'll add to it with a reply. I forgot to mention that both port direction keywords "input", "output", "inout" but also the "wire" keyword as part of a port direction declaration are not keyword colored.

    And a question: Is syntax highlighting handled through scripting or through a DLL API ? Is this something that could be worked on by a user? (i.e. create own DLL version with highlighting code; or through a script or regular expressions etc.) ?

  • RichardT_altera's avatar
    RichardT_altera
    Icon for Super Contributor rankSuper Contributor
    21 hours ago

    The GUI issue where the text appears to overlap for the ALTPLL is a known problem that has existed for some time.
    You can either use a Linux OS or instantiate it using HDL, as mentioned in another forum post shared by FvM.
    Unfortunately, the fix is still in progress because it involves a legacy IP.

    Regards,
    Richard Tan