Feedback on IDE

[fordprefect]

Hi WorldViz,

generally I find all the changes to the Vizard IDE very helpful. Only feature I do not use is the minimap. Here my thoughts in detail:

1. Alt+1 to ease color definition is a great idea, thank you for that one.
   It's usefullness would increase if, at invocation of the dialog, it would show the color definition at current cursor position, instead of the last color chosen.
   
2. I do not like the change of the editor's dirty indicator on the document tab, now overlapping with the close button. Is there a good reason to have two informations on the same position?
   
3. When trying to access color definitions built into Vizard I have the problem to find them because they have no common part. e.g. viz.SKYBLUE you would not find if you don't know it is there at all. I suggest to name all the colors something like COL_SKYBLUE (as the COLOR_ part is already in use). But maybe it is also viable to add them to the COLOR_* group of constants?
   
4. Also very much like the new feature that selected code elements are highlighted throughout the file. It would be great if in addition the occurences could also be indicated e.g. in the scrollbar, or the new minimap (which I would use only then).
   
5. Quick Search Toolbar: I use the feature often so I'd like to see some modifications there:
   1. I think it's not good practice to reuse the current options from the find dialog (Alt+F) for the quick search (like Match whole word, Match case - [I don't use the others]).
      I'd like to see such check boxes added to the Toolbar so I can modify the options easily, without opening the dialog window.
   2. The existing search options (Open Documents, Current Document) should be extended with a All Folder Documents option which looks through all files in the current document's folder. Currently I have to have all documents of the project open to make a thorough search of object references. (Which are 16 files by now.)
   3. In the Find Results Window only the first occurrence in a line is highlighted. I suggest to highlight ALL occurrences (like it is done for selected word in file).
6. Replace (Ctrl-H)
   1. Question: Why is the Replace All In radio button group only relevant to the Replace All button? I suggest to rename the group Find where and apply it to the search area for all buttons.
   2. To match the find-in-files possibilities I would like to have a replace-in-files command. The current replace-dialog could be enhanced and provide these options for Find where:
      • Selection
      • Entire Document
      • Open Documents
      • All Folder Documents
7. I'd also like to suggest this feature to ease programming:
   1. Variable/Method Extraction Support from (context) menu
      {BTW - Java Eclipse can do that marvelously}
      When highlighting an expression within a code line, a (context) menu entry allows to extract that code part, assigning it to a new variable. E.g.
      

      _mySensors = viz.mergeLinkable(_trackers[sensor], viz.add('intersense.dle').addTracker())

      can easily be converted to
      

      myCube = viz.add('intersense.dle').addTracker() 
      _mySensors = viz.mergeLinkable(_trackers[sensor], myCube)

      Name of the new variable is asked for in a popup dialog, or, even better, can be added in-place of the variable assignment and will immediately (letter-by-letter) show up in the line above where the new assignment placed, until the Enter key is pressed.
      Similar the extraction of a block of code into a method could be supported.
      
   2. Function Tooltip
      When adding the opening parenthesis of a method/function the methods docstring is shown in tooltip over the code. So far so fantastic, but when entering the first parameter the tooltip vanishes. I propose either to leave the tooltip ontop until the closing parenthesis, or at least popping it up again when the next comma is typed. In either case, the next formal parameter coming up should be formatted bold (for better orientation).
      
   3. Intelligient Ctrl+Backspace / Ctrl+Delete
      Currently this combination deletes (backward or forward) wordwise, until the next whitespace character/dot/parenthesis encountered. I propose to change this to word parts. Can be achieved by first adding the underscore to the list of stop characters. Ideally, when using mixed case naming conventions, the uppercase character should also stop deletion. e.g. from myMinorVersion Ctrl+Del would delete my, and Version with Ctrl+Backspace. or, from MY_MINOR_VERSION, MY or _VERSION would vanish respectively.
      
   4. If - Sensitive Context Menu Enhancement
      When right-clicking on a line with if command (or else, elif) a new entry in the context menu allows to "reverse if" which 1- negates the if-condition-expression, and 2- exchanges the (el)if block with the else-block.
      

Hope that helps you (and all users),
Best Regards, Walter

[fordprefect]

Hi folks,

basically I find the possibility to scroll windows simultaneously while pressing Alt a nice feature (though so far I had no use case for it).
But I consider it a bug that now, when using Alt+Left or Alt+Right to navigate backwards or forwards within the same file, the other windows will follow the same movement. Which, in my opinion, should not be.

Hope you can get rid of that,
Best Regards, Walter