Editor-related features Oxygen 7

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Alantin
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:47 pm

Editor-related features Oxygen 7

Post by Alantin »

Hi all.

I've been working with both the beta version and final release of Oxygen 7. Here are some of the points I stumbled across.

CSS collapsing
CSS selectors do not provide the collapse icon when only 1 property is assigned.

tab close button
Is it possible to implement an option in the preferences to disable the close button on the tabs? Many a time I try to select a tab, instead ending up closing a tab.

line wrap shortcut key
Is it possible to implement an option in the preferences to assign a shortcut key to line wrap? If it's there I can't seem to find it.

quote auto-complete
Would it be possible to make quote mark auto-completion configurable? Although it's an attractive feature, it also disables other auto-completion because the character to the right of the caret is already there (the quote itself).

transformation scenario indicator
Would it be possible to implement a clear indication of which transformation scenario applies to the current stylesheet. Is it also possible to provide a quick-switch mechanism between transformation scenario's without having to go the transformation scenario configuration dialog?

named template auto-complete
When creating a call-template element which calls a named template located in an included or imported stylesheet, the name of the named template doesn't show up in the auto-complete list. Is it possible to implement this?

configurable line number font
It appears that the line number font is a smaller version of the editor font. Personally I use Andale Mono (font size 10) which, for me anyway, is the right balance between legibility and maximum viewable text. However, the line numbers become quite unreadable. Could the line number font or font size be added to the font configuration dialog in the preferences?
Zby
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2005 10:52 am

Post by Zby »

I would also suggest a small improvement to the existing functionality.
When on-the-fly spell checker is enabled, and thus misspelled words are underlined, I would love if the context menu invoked on a misspelled word listed suggested words on top of it. Right now, spell checker is well hidden on second level of the menu, while suggested spelling is even deeper. I have difficulties to navigate to the right word. I would expect the spelling aid to behave somehow similar as it is in word processors.

Regards,
-Zby
sorin_ristache
Posts: 4141
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 2:12 pm

Re: Editor-related features Oxygen 7

Post by sorin_ristache »

Hello,
Alantin wrote:CSS collapsing
CSS selectors do not provide the collapse icon when only 1 property is assigned.
It was considered that collapsing only two lines (the property and the closing bracket) does not improve visibility of the file, as folding is generally intended to do. Maybe it is better to fold any CSS selector no matter how many properties it contains.
Alantin wrote:tab close button
Is it possible to implement an option in the preferences to disable the close button on the tabs? Many a time I try to select a tab, instead ending up closing a tab.
We will look into it.
Alantin wrote:line wrap shortcut key
Is it possible to implement an option in the preferences to assign a shortcut key to line wrap? If it's there I can't seem to find it.
It's not there because we didn't think the line wrap is toggled very often and a user preference in the Preferences dialog would be enough. We will look into that too.
Alantin wrote:quote auto-complete
Would it be possible to make quote mark auto-completion configurable? Although it's an attractive feature, it also disables other auto-completion because the character to the right of the caret is already there (the quote itself).
I don't really understand what is disabled. Can you give an example please ?
Alantin wrote:transformation scenario indicator
Would it be possible to implement a clear indication of which transformation scenario applies to the current stylesheet. Is it also possible to provide a quick-switch mechanism between transformation scenario's without having to go the transformation scenario configuration dialog?
The current transformation scenario associated to the edited document (XML of XSL) is indicated in the tooltip of the Apply transformation scenario toolbar button used to run the scenario. Just hold the mouse button over that button to see the scenario name.

I think it is not easy to find a quicker switch procedure than the following:

- Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up the dialog with the list of scenarios (already with the keyboard fosus on the list of scenarios; this is the shortcut of the Configure transformation scenario action, configurable in Preferences -> Menu Shortcut Keys),

- navigate up/down in the scenario list with the arrow keys,

- press ENTER to switch to the scenario currently selected in the list (the dialog is closed because the default button of the dialog is OK so pressing ENTER is the same as clicking on OK),

- Ctrl+Shift+T to run the scenario (this is the shortcut of the Apply transformation scenario action, configurable in Preferences -> Menu Shortcut Keys).

We were careful with such keyboard navigation details when the GUI was implemented (ex: the initial focus is on the scenario list, the default button activated on ENTER is the OK button) exactly for assisting the intensive keyboard users. The procedure which I described is very similar to the content completion procedure for inserting XML tags: press <, navigate up/down with the arrow keys, press ENTER. Try it for switching scenarios and let us know if you can imagine a quicker way so that we can implement it.
Alantin wrote:named template auto-complete
When creating a call-template element which calls a named template located in an included or imported stylesheet, the name of the named template doesn't show up in the auto-complete list. Is it possible to implement this?
This would be an enhancement of the auto-complete for template names. We noted it.
Alantin wrote:configurable line number font
It appears that the line number font is a smaller version of the editor font. Personally I use Andale Mono (font size 10) which, for me anyway, is the right balance between legibility and maximum viewable text. However, the line numbers become quite unreadable. Could the line number font or font size be added to the font configuration dialog in the preferences?
The line number font grows with the editor font when the editor font size is changed in Preferences. But its size has a lower limit than the editor font because exceeding that limit would take too much space from the editing area. Also it must be a fixed size font for proper rendering of all the decorations on the left side ruler. So the user cannot be allowed to choose any font he wants for line numbers. You can make the line numbers more readable by changing the DPI setting of your machine if you run <oXygen/> on Windows (Control Panel -> Display Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> General -> DPI setting).

Thank you,
Sorin
sorin_ristache
Posts: 4141
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 2:12 pm

Post by sorin_ristache »

Hello Zby,
Zby wrote:I would also suggest a small improvement to the existing functionality.
When on-the-fly spell checker is enabled, and thus misspelled words are underlined, I would love if the context menu invoked on a misspelled word listed suggested words on top of it. Right now, spell checker is well hidden on second level of the menu, while suggested spelling is even deeper. I have difficulties to navigate to the right word. I would expect the spelling aid to behave somehow similar as it is in word processors.
We noted the request. We will improve the arrangement of the Spelling submenu and its content. We are thinking about replacing the Spell check suggestions submenu with its content. Does it look better if spelling suggestions are moved to the top of the context menu ?

Regards,
Sorin
Zby
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2005 10:52 am

Post by Zby »

IMO, it does look better. Bear in mind that spelling suggestions should be placed on top only if the on-the-fly spelling is enabled. This is my guess, but based on my experience with a variety of word processors.

Thanks,
-Zby
Alantin
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:47 pm

Post by Alantin »

Quote auto-complete
Never mind, my fault. I confused this with the named template in an external stylesheet problem. I though the second quote which is inserted automatically after typing the first quote, prevented the auto-complete function. I checked it again, it doesn't. Then I remembered that I tried to auto-complete an external named template. Again, my bad.

Transformation scenario indicator
The mouseover indicator, although a nice feature, is not usable when you're typing away. The shortcut key route is usable, apart from the fact that it opens a dialog and apart from the fact that a user has to explicitly understand that the transformation scenario which has focus is actually the selected transformation scenario, not a random listbox choice. Maybe an iconic indicator of some sort?

Configurable line number font
Fair enough. You can still let a user choose a fixed size font family and the font size itself. The DPI solution isn't really an option because that changes the entire Windows Operating System instead of just Oxygen.

Thank you for looking into the other points made.

Just to make it a little more interesting I have two more things.

Jumpy indent
If you select a large amount of text and then scroll back to the beginning of your selection, indentation using the tab key wil cause the screen to scroll forward to the end of your selection, instead of staying in place and indenting the selection outside the screen area.

Comment toggle
Would it be problematic to implement the comment toggle for other languages as well? I'm thinking mainly of JavaScript and CSS, but I'm sure there are other languages that will benefit from this feature. Also, is it possible to make the comment toggle really a toggle, that is, hitting it once comments the selected text, hitting it again removes that comment?
sorin_ristache
Posts: 4141
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 2:12 pm

Post by sorin_ristache »

Alantin wrote:Jumpy indent
If you select a large amount of text and then scroll back to the beginning of your selection, indentation using the tab key wil cause the screen to scroll forward to the end of your selection, instead of staying in place and indenting the selection outside the screen area.
We added it to our bugzilla.
Alantin wrote:Comment toggle
Would it be problematic to implement the comment toggle for other languages as well? I'm thinking mainly of JavaScript and CSS, but I'm sure there are other languages that will benefit from this feature. Also, is it possible to make the comment toggle really a toggle, that is, hitting it once comments the selected text, hitting it again removes that comment?
We will consider it for a future version.

Thank you,
Sorin
Radu
Posts: 9018
Joined: Fri Jul 09, 2004 5:18 pm

Post by Radu »

Hi,

We fixed the "Jumpy indent" problem and the fix will probably be available in the next minor version (7.1).


Regards, Radu.
sorin_ristache
Posts: 4141
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 2:12 pm

Post by sorin_ristache »

Hello,
sorin wrote:
Alantin wrote:Comment toggle
Would it be problematic to implement the comment toggle for other languages as well? I'm thinking mainly of JavaScript and CSS, but I'm sure there are other languages that will benefit from this feature. Also, is it possible to make the comment toggle really a toggle, that is, hitting it once comments the selected text, hitting it again removes that comment?
We will consider it for a future version.
The Comment toggle action was implemented for editors of type XML, CSS, JavaScript and XQuery. It will be available starting with version 7.1 as an entry of the popup menu of the editor and also in the menu Document -> Edit. By default it has no associated keyboard shortcut but you can assign a shortcut in Options -> Preferences -> Menu Shortcut Keys. See also this topic.

Regards,
Sorin
Last edited by sorin_ristache on Tue Feb 14, 2006 1:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
sorin_ristache
Posts: 4141
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 2:12 pm

Post by sorin_ristache »

Hello again,
Alantin wrote:Transformation scenario indicator
The mouseover indicator, although a nice feature, is not usable when you're typing away. The shortcut key route is usable, apart from the fact that it opens a dialog and apart from the fact that a user has to explicitly understand that the transformation scenario which has focus is actually the selected transformation scenario, not a random listbox choice. Maybe an iconic indicator of some sort?
In a future version the transform actions will be refactored into a Transform toolbar with a combo box containing a history of the most recently applied transform scenarios (with the latest scenario as the current selection of the combo), and the actions Apply scenario and Debug scenario as they are now. The action Apply scenario will run the scenario selected in the combo, so the combo will act as the requested scenario indicator, more visible than the mouseover tooltip.

Regards,
Sorin
Franck
Posts: 35
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 11:00 am

Post by Franck »

My particular problem with transformation scenarios (scenarii?) is that there is no way to organise them. Not all my scenarios apply to all all my XML files and vice-versa.

The current behaviour doesn't map to my way of working.
When editing a given XSL, I'd like to have a list of scenarios that is specific to that XSL. For example, I have a group of data example files that I use to generate an HTML screen out of.
When editing an XML file, I have a list of scenarios specific to that XML, for example all the XSL that use a given data set to generate different screens.

This problem overlaps with another: the project view doesn't help me at all, as it doesn't map to my way of working.

In an utopian Oxygen, I'd have a project view that groups file per location as well as per scenario. If I need to edit a file, pick it up from the file location view. If I need to test an XSL, pick a source file from the list under the appropriate scenario. If I am editing an XML file and want to see the impact on associate XSL, I want the XSL displayed under the XML file in a nice tree view.

Does this makes sense?

While I am on about the project view, I wouldn't mind being able to add folders to it, so that files added to the underlying file system automatically appear in the project view.

Thanks
sorin_ristache
Posts: 4141
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 2:12 pm

Post by sorin_ristache »

Hello,
Franck wrote:While I am on about the project view, I wouldn't mind being able to add folders to it, so that files added to the underlying file system automatically appear in the project view.
The menu item Link to External Folders available on the popup menu of folder nodes of the project tree does that. When you add files to such an external folder execute the Refresh action of the popup menu to see them in the Project view.

Regards,
Sorin
Franck
Posts: 35
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 11:00 am

Post by Franck »

The menu item Link to External Folders available on the popup menu of folder nodes of the project tree does that. When you add files to such an external folder execute the Refresh action of the popup menu to see them in the Project view.
I should have guessed... :-)

That said, would it be possible to have a positive filter on the external folder view?

So instead of having to specify the files and folders I don't want to see, I could simply list *.xml. *.xsl, *.css and have a nice Oxygen view of my development environment.

Thanks.
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