#522 Broken automatic comment bracketing

[Dan Smith]

The automatic multi-line commenting behavior is messed up when I
put text on the first line. For example, the following (pipe is the
cursor):

/** |

Becomes this after hitting enter:

/**
* |
*/

But this:

/** Some text|

Becomes this with an enter:

/** Some text
*/|

Here, the cursor appears *after* the end-of-comment token, and I
have to manipulate the cursor to get back inside the comment.

Worse, breaking the first line:

/** My |comment */

rearranges the text:

/** My
*/|comment */

The word "comment" here is no longer inside of the comment.

The logic seems to be messed up somewhere.

[Mathias Ricken]

Logged In: YES
user_id=1075744

It took me a while to realize that the setting
"Automatically Close Block Comments" needs to be checked in
Preferences/Miscellaneous. After I checked that, I was able
to verify your bug report.

As for the first problem, what do you think should be the
result?

/** Some test|

goes to

/** Some test|
*/

or

/** Some test
* |*/

or

/** Some test
* |
*/

For the second problem, it's quite clear that

/** My |comment */

should become

/** Some
* test. *

[Dan Smith]

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user_id=1060117

I think the most natural approach to take here:

/** Some test|

Is the one we take here:

/** |

That is, insert two new lines, one continuing the comment and one ending it:

/** Some test
* |
*/

(The only difference here is that '*'s are indented two spaces, not one.)

[Robert Cartwright]

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When I briefly tried the "Automatically close block
comments" option a long time ago, I found the conventions
were counter-intuitive. How does the IDE know when to
insert a closing bracket and where? It almost never did
what I wanted It reminds me of the absurd automatic
capitalization conventions in Microsoft Word/Powerpoint.

My inclination is to simply eliminate this feature (which
eliminates the bug) but I am open to other opinions. For
those of us who believe in conserving vertical space in
code, automatically forcing every block comment (e.g.,
javadoc comments) to span at least 3 lines is very distasteful.

[Robert Cartwright]

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In the latest build, the only bug that I can reproduce is a
variation on the last one, which looks like a logic error in
the code to automatically close comments. With the current
build, you get the text:
/* My
* |comment */
*/

where the "c" is directly underneath the "M" and the cursor
precedes the "c".

This behavior is clearly not what we want.

Here is my proposal for how DrJava should behave in this
mode. The only situation in which DrJava should insert a
closing "*/" comment bracket is when <enter> is typed at the
END of the opening line of a comment. In this case, it
should automatically place "* " on the next line followed by
the cursor and "*/" on the following line (as shown in the
first example above). The existing auto-indenting rules
will be used to determine how many spaces are inserted
before the "*" characters on each of the two new lines.

Note that if <enter> is typed at the end of the first line
of an existing comment, the specified two-line nsertion
happens, but this should be an unusual event.

[Mathias Ricken]

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When "automatically close comments" is enabled, I can still
reproduce other problems:

/** Foo |bar */

on return becomes

/** Foo
*/|bar */

and

/** Foo bar|

on return becomes

/** foo bar
*/|

I don't think these issues have been resolved.

[Robert Cartwright]

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user_id=430590

I commited a source revision that apparently fixes this bug.
Check it out.