The ECB-Methods buffer is probably the most important browsing window offered by ECB. It displays all parsing informations of the current source-buffer (the buffer displayed in the current active edit-window).
Normally ECB gets all informations displayed in this Methods-buffer from the semantic-library - at least for semantic-sources. This library parses auto. the current source-buffer in the edit-window of ECB and returns all information in form of tags to ECB which displays them in a browse-able form in its Method-buffer. See ECB Methods-window for information how to use the Methods-buffer.
There are several options to customize which tags ECB should display in general, if the tags should be collapsed or expanded, how to fontify them (i.e. syntax-highlighting) and something more.
ecb-show-tagsyou specify how ECB should display the tags returned by the semantic parser. Semantic divides its tags in several so called tag classes. A tag-class is always a symbol and can be for example
type(tags which represent a class1, a interface, an enumeration etc.),
function(tags which represent function or methods),
variable(variables and attributes),
include(import-statements) etc. There is no predefined superset of allowed tag-class-symbols because each language-parser can define its own tag-classes. But to get an overview of the most common tag-classes see the default value of the option
With the option
ecb-show-tags you can now specify how ECB
should display tags of a certain tag-class in a certain major-mode.
You can tell ECB that all tags of a tag-class
X should be
displayed in an expanded bucket and all tags of a tag-class
should be displayed in a collapsed bucket and all tags of a tag-class
Z should be displayed flattened (means not contained in a
expandable/collapsable bucket-node). These settings can be made
separately for each major-mode but you can also define a
default-display which takes effect when for a major-mode no special
setting can be found in
For every tag-class you can tell ECB how the tags should be sorted.
These are the most important options for this topic but it is
recommended to have a look into the customize-group
(see ecb-methods) and check all the options offered there!
All these options are only relevant for semantic-sources and take no effect for non-semantic-sources!
 Do not confuse the term “class” in the context of a tag, which means the class of the tag and which is a semantic-term and a “class” in the context of an object oriented language like Java or C++! Normally the surrounding context sould be sufficient to understand which type of “class” is meant whenever the term “class” is used in this manual.