New Variable Watcher

[Ken Ray]

On 10/4/06 7:19 AM, "Ray Horsley" <ray at linkitonline.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Ken, for your attention regarding the VW.

You're welcome! :-)

> Generally speaking, the inherently close relationship between the
> VW and the Script Editor [SE] beckon several questions.  Typically
> throughout my day I open the SE without opening the VW and
> write my scripts.  I then run them with the debugger on, in which
> case I nearly always want the VW open.  I assume a lot of us work
> this way but I'm not sure since I never stand over anybody's
> shoulder and look.

I agree with you... I do the same thing.

> But if my assumption is correct I think the following short list
> would greatly increase productivity and eliminate a lot of repetitive
> chores:
> 
> 1)  When the SE opens in debug mode the VW should automatically open
>          -- or at least have a keyboard shortcut to open it
> 2)  When closing the SE the VW should also close
>         -- a keyboard shortcut to close here would also be nice

This would be a great optional addition to the VW/SE - I'm not sure if
you're aware, but the VW has a context menu that lets you change the font,
text size, and colors used for different kinds of tokens, as well as
bringing up the Execution Contexts window (just Control/Right-click on any
field in the VW). 

Obviously I need to store those preferences, so I could add two preferences
to AutoOpen and AutoClose the VW in that menu so they could be set to each
person's individual tastes.

> 3)  Keyboard shortcuts typed after clicking in the VW should pass
> through to the SE

Command-keys in the SE are flaky right now... and I'm not sure if it's an SE
thing or a MetaCard/focus thing. I'll see what I can do about passing
command-keys from the VW to the SE.
 
> The last one of these would really be a welcome addition since it can
> be quite exasperating to click somewhere in the VW during debugging,
> then forget to click in the SE and instead just type a keyboard
> shortcut to step to the next line of script.  The whole script runs
> and blows all the work you just did positioning windows and so forth
> to debug.  

Been there, done that! ;-)

> This area also brings up the question, why does the
> command-M shortcut to step through a script never work in the out-of-
> the-box McTools.mc stack?  I always have to change this to command-D
> (easier to do with the left hand) and then trap for it in both the VW
> as well as the SE.

The reason is that it was a poor choice of command keys because when the SE
is open, it still has the MC menubar, so typing a command-key that
corresponds to an existing menu item in the menubar seems to get routed
there and not to the SE sometimes. I'll see if there's anything I can do to
stabilize that...
 
> On a note of appreciation, I really like the new VW's ability to
> remember not only where I left it on screen, but also the height of
> the fields within it.  I use to add my own handlers for this, too.

This goes along with being able to store the VW prefs I was mentioning
above... 

Once that was possible, saving the sizes/positions/colors/font/etc. was
cake.

:-)

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com