Intellisense displays comments wrongly in VSCode

[gabsoftware]

The generated documentation by PCT's JsonDocumentation is correct, it has the "comments" fields all correct.

But in VS Code, it frequently displays the Intellisense popup wrongly, especially for multi-line comments.
This happens also with comments in Progress' ADE libraries.

• First line can be omitted entirely
• It will not always respect end of lines and concat everything
• @PARAM and @return aren't recognized and just displayed as text

Now I'd love to help on this, but it seems that the language server is closed source.

A few examples:

  {
    "className": "commun.metier.CGOHTTPRequest",
    "inherits": "Progress.Lang.Object",
    "abstract": false,
    "final": false,
    "interface": false,
    "serializable": false,
    "enum": false,
    "useWidgetPool": false,
    "interfaces": [],
    "comments": [
      "Wrapper fluent autour du client HTTP OpenEdge.",
      "Conserve une instance active de IHttpRequest des la construction ;",
      "la plupart des methodes deleguent directement dessus (a la maniere",
      "de HttpRequestDecorator). Fournit des options de tracage HAR et de",
      "suivi manuel des redirections 3xx (contournement du bug d'encodage",
      "des \"+\" du client HTTP ABL sur les URL S3 presignees)."
    ],

In this example:

• the first line is absent
• the following lines are concatenated
• content is truncated

Next example, a method:

      {
        "name": "WithFile",
        "signature": "WithFile(IC,IC)U",
        "returnType": "commun.metier.CGOHTTPRequest",
        "abstract": false,
        "static": false,
        "extent": 0,
        "modifier": "public",
        "comments": [
          "Definit le corps de la requete a partir du contenu d'un fichier et",
          "d'un type de contenu explicite",
          "",
          "@param CHARACTER Nom (ou chemin) du fichier",
          "@param CHARACTER Content-Type du fichier",
          "@return commun.metier.CGOHTTPRequest L'instance courante (chainage fluent)"
        ],
        "parameters": [
          {
            "name": "pr_ch_filename",
            "extent": 0,
            "modifier": "INPUT",
            "type": "C"
          },
          {
            "name": "pr_ch_contentType",
            "extent": 0,
            "modifier": "INPUT",
            "type": "C"
          }
        ]
      },

In this example:

• first line is omitted
• shows the wrong overload method comment (shows the 1-parameter method comment instead of the 2-parameters method comment)
• @PARAM is shown as text only
• both @PARAM lines are concatenated instead of having each one per line
• @return is not shown

It seems rather random whether or not it will show the first line or concat next lines instead of showing them on a new line.

Am I doing anything wrong?

Thanks,

Gabriel

[gquerret]

VS Code version?

[gabsoftware]

1.126.04524 (It's VS Codium but I can test on real VS Code if necessary)

[gquerret]

Yes, it would be better to test with VS Code.
The JsonDocumentation is read at the beginning of the session and stored in a cache, I don't really see how method documentation could be returned in an inconsistent way. You can try running with --trace to see if the documentation is sent correctly from the LS to the client.

[gabsoftware]

I just tested with latest VS Code and latest OpenEdge ABL extension, same result. But I am not surprised because VS Code is basically VS Codium with added telemetry.

No particular error with --trace

[2026-07-29T12:01:50,845] [INFO] Reading documentation from local resource
[2026-07-29T12:01:50,859] [DEBUG] DidOpen file:///c%3A/Dev12/ocean4/ocean4_test/tests/commun/metier/CGOHTTPRequestTest.cls - Project Project file:///c%3A/Dev12/ocean4/
[2026-07-29T12:01:50,866] [DEBUG] ChangeConfiguration: {"abl":{"configuration":{"runtimes":[{"name":"12.8","path":"C:\\Progress\\128\\OpenEdge"}],"defaultRuntime":"12.8","maxThreads":-1,"hideAvmWindow":false,"deleteRCodeOnError":false},"buildMode":3,"licenseKey":"","useProcedureEditorKeyBindings":true,"closeEditorAfterOpenExternal":true,"defaultProject":"","showCommandsInContextMenu":true,"showProjectCommandsInContextMenu":false,"langServerJavaExecutable":"","langServerDebug":true,"langServerTrace":true,"langServerExtraJavaArgs":"","debugAdapterDebug":true,"debugAdapterTrace":true,"debugAdapterExtraJavaArgs":"","completion":{"upperCase":true,"showOptionalParentheses":true,"useWildcardUsings":true,"includeFromClause":false},"methodSignature":{"perspective":"chronological"},"formatter":{"keepIfThenInOneLine":true,"keepThenInNewLine":false,"keepElseIfInOneLine":true,"keepElseAndIfInSeparateLine":false,"keepSimpleIfThenStatementInSameLine":false,"keepSimpleElseStatementInSameLine":false},"outline":{"showIncludeFiles":true,"showContentInIncludeFiles":true},"inlayHints":{"externalProcedureHints":true,"constantsOnly":false,"shortVariableLength":2},"expandKeywords":{"databaseName":false,"bufferName":false}}}
[2026-07-29T12:01:50,867] [DEBUG] Runtime default: 12.8
[2026-07-29T12:01:50,868] [DEBUG] Found 1 OE installations: 12.8 [Valid]
[2026-07-29T12:01:50,873] [DEBUG] documentSymbol for file:///c%3A/Dev12/ocean4/ocean4_test/tests/commun/metier/CGOHTTPRequestTest.cls
[2026-07-29T12:01:50,885] [DEBUG] inlayHint for file:///c%3A/Dev12/ocean4/ocean4_test/tests/commun/metier/CGOHTTPRequestTest.cls - Range: 186:0 to 367:56
[2026-07-29T12:01:51,055] [DEBUG] foldingRange for file:///c%3A/Dev12/ocean4/ocean4_test/tests/commun/metier/CGOHTTPRequestTest.cls
[2026-07-29T12:01:51,062] [INFO] [ocean4] Read 3093 entries from class documentation cache
[2026-07-29T12:01:51,064] [INFO] [ocean4] Reading JSON documentation from 'C:\Dev12\ocean4\doc\ocean4_com.json'

[gquerret]

You can have a look at %TEMP%\vscode-langserv-trace.txt when trace mode is activated. It's super verbose, but you'll see all messages exchanged between the client and the language server. I'd like to confirm whether the messages are correctly sent from the LS.

[gabsoftware]

Hi Gilles, I started my vacations so it'll have to wait until next month! :)