first of all, I'm not sure if this is the right forum for feature-requests for upcoming versions of dev-cpp. If there's a better place, please excuse me for this posting, I will post it in another forum then.
One feature I would like to see in future versions of dev-cpp is named 'code folding'. I think some of you may know this feature from other editors like kate, kedit, SciTE, ...
For the others: if you edit some source code (C or others) and you have something like this:
void DoSomething(int arg1, int arg2) { / this function does something /
/ many lines of code /
}
the editor can 'fold' the code to: [+] void DoSomething(int arg1, int arg2) { / this function does something /
The rest will be hidden. I believe it's a nice feature, because with it the code gets more readable (sections you're not interested in are only displayed as one line). With a click on the [+] you can unfold the section.
Please let me know what you think of it.
greetz
z0ttel
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Please understand that I am not officially connected with this project. I have scanned the entire list of messages on this forum and read many of them so I have a small idea of the way things work around here. What I am about to say is based on that (possibly incorrect) understanding. If I am wrong or have oversteped some boundry, will the regular administrators PLEASE let me know.
Feature requests are indeed posted to this forum for discussion, but if you really want you idea considered you need to post it to the RFE list where it will be given a priority. There is not a whole lot of energy to spare on this project (or on any open source project for that matter) and most if it is being directed at stability issues at this time. If you can actually help with the project, the chances of your request being implemented increase.
As for the feature itself, I have indeed seen something like this before. It can be very useful for large projects and is supposed to be useful with ISO9000. (I have no personal experience with ISO9000 so I am not at all certain about that.) DECs LSE from the late 80s or early 90s had this capability along with a multi-language code completion capability. (LSE resembles EMACS in some respects - you could do almost anything with it if you knew its internal language.) It let you get a lot of code written quite quickly. That was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The result is a tendency to produce large modules with large functions. It takes a mental effort to break the functions down into smaller pieces. If energy is to be expended in this direction, Knuth's Literate Programming ideas are somewhat related and provide similar (possibly superior) benifits but with a different mechanism that might be easier to implement.
Having watched this developed once without actually taking part in the process, I get the impression that it is more than a little tricky to implement and needs some fairly complex display code to get it to work.
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Max and Marek - thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of the RFE, future ideas will be posted there. I think that you misunderstood the term 'code folding' (or I misunderstood your explaination). 'Code folding' has nothing to do with code completion in any way -- it's 'just' a visual effect to hide information from the display.
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z0ttel:
I think you missed the 'along with' phrase. Code completion and folding are indeed not the same thing but LSE had both. It is actually more than just a visual effect since it requires the code folding code to understand a fair amount about the language being displayed in order to do the folding intelegently. That ties it code completion which also requires a knowledge of the language. On the other hand Knuth's literate programming stuff is much more language independent, being more a macro and scrap collecting system than anything else.
Marek:
Hmm. Four requests, some for better versions than others. From what little I know of it, it's a can of worms. The literate programming stuff can be forced to do much the same thing but it requires more user effort, but the resulting product should also be better and easier to understand. It's more than a little different, but addresses at least a similar problem from a very different point of view. I'm not going to make more than minimal suggestions until I'm in a position to actually do something to help, so take this with a lump of salt...
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Hi there,
first of all, I'm not sure if this is the right forum for feature-requests for upcoming versions of dev-cpp. If there's a better place, please excuse me for this posting, I will post it in another forum then.
One feature I would like to see in future versions of dev-cpp is named 'code folding'. I think some of you may know this feature from other editors like kate, kedit, SciTE, ...
For the others: if you edit some source code (C or others) and you have something like this:
void DoSomething(int arg1, int arg2) { / this function does something /
/ many lines of code /
}
the editor can 'fold' the code to:
[+] void DoSomething(int arg1, int arg2) { / this function does something /
The rest will be hidden. I believe it's a nice feature, because with it the code gets more readable (sections you're not interested in are only displayed as one line). With a click on the [+] you can unfold the section.
Please let me know what you think of it.
greetz
z0ttel
Please understand that I am not officially connected with this project. I have scanned the entire list of messages on this forum and read many of them so I have a small idea of the way things work around here. What I am about to say is based on that (possibly incorrect) understanding. If I am wrong or have oversteped some boundry, will the regular administrators PLEASE let me know.
Feature requests are indeed posted to this forum for discussion, but if you really want you idea considered you need to post it to the RFE list where it will be given a priority. There is not a whole lot of energy to spare on this project (or on any open source project for that matter) and most if it is being directed at stability issues at this time. If you can actually help with the project, the chances of your request being implemented increase.
As for the feature itself, I have indeed seen something like this before. It can be very useful for large projects and is supposed to be useful with ISO9000. (I have no personal experience with ISO9000 so I am not at all certain about that.) DECs LSE from the late 80s or early 90s had this capability along with a multi-language code completion capability. (LSE resembles EMACS in some respects - you could do almost anything with it if you knew its internal language.) It let you get a lot of code written quite quickly. That was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The result is a tendency to produce large modules with large functions. It takes a mental effort to break the functions down into smaller pieces. If energy is to be expended in this direction, Knuth's Literate Programming ideas are somewhat related and provide similar (possibly superior) benifits but with a different mechanism that might be easier to implement.
Having watched this developed once without actually taking part in the process, I get the impression that it is more than a little tricky to implement and needs some fairly complex display code to get it to work.
Max and Marek - thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of the RFE, future ideas will be posted there. I think that you misunderstood the term 'code folding' (or I misunderstood your explaination). 'Code folding' has nothing to do with code completion in any way -- it's 'just' a visual effect to hide information from the display.
z0ttel:
I think you missed the 'along with' phrase. Code completion and folding are indeed not the same thing but LSE had both. It is actually more than just a visual effect since it requires the code folding code to understand a fair amount about the language being displayed in order to do the folding intelegently. That ties it code completion which also requires a knowledge of the language. On the other hand Knuth's literate programming stuff is much more language independent, being more a macro and scrap collecting system than anything else.
Marek:
Hmm. Four requests, some for better versions than others. From what little I know of it, it's a can of worms. The literate programming stuff can be forced to do much the same thing but it requires more user effort, but the resulting product should also be better and easier to understand. It's more than a little different, but addresses at least a similar problem from a very different point of view. I'm not going to make more than minimal suggestions until I'm in a position to actually do something to help, so take this with a lump of salt...
Max:
You're right, I missed the 'along with' phrase. ;)
it has already been suggested couple of times:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=10639&atid=360639&func=detail&aid=743425