> Hi Everyone,
>
> I am interested in impoving the jedit UI. My first thoughts are to
> have it in terms of the new NetBeans(4) UI, which is pretty good. I
> would like to hear everyone's views on this before proceeding.
>
> In terms of usability, I think we are already there as our focus is
> more in terms of being a text editor and not an IDE. But there is
> always going to be scope for improvements. So, we could discuss in
> those terms as well.
Saleem
For my part, as a regular jEdit user, there aren't too many UI features I
miss or want changed. Some panels, like Plugin Options, could be more
consistent, but currently this is up to each plugin developer. Could have
contextual help, and maybe dragable/dockable panes would be nice (but onl=
y
in a few cases).
As far as I know, as of jEdit 4.2, the component to display the buffer is
coupled with the larger frame and some other components; thus, you can't
just pull it out to have a syntax-highlighting, encoding-sensitive,
macro-enabled editor pane to drop into your own apps. Slava has listed a
task "separate text area from view" for 4.3, but I haven't heard details
on what the limitations would be.
My (very) personal suggestion would be: don't imagine you can rewrite the
UI--it would be a huge amount of work, if nothing else. If there are some
plugins you like but would prefer a different or improved UI, maybe offer
to contribute patches to the owner. Or maybe offer some patches for minor
UI changes in jEdit itself. You could always fork and rewrite the UI in
NB, but why do that? It works pretty darn well as it is, and it's GPL to
boot.
So--start small! Code small improvements!
(Or, you could write the shell of a text editor in NB, and use JEditorPan=
e
for now, and if/when it's every pluggable, pull the jEdit pane into your
new super-editor.)
One thing I would love to see: an automated layout, pretty-good looking
plugin properties manager with contextual help for each property in
tooltips, pulled by parsing option documentation from the help files usin=
g
xpath! (and, a flying cow, but that's another story).
Your enthusiasm is welcome, however (by me at least).
From the guy who talks a lot but never actually codes anything--
Patrick
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