New Variable Watcher

[Ray Horsley]

Thanks Ken.  I was unaware of the VW's context menu.  I agree it  
would be great to add some way to store those choices as  
preferences.  Future additions to the context menu such as auto  
opening and closing could also be stored.  For right now I'm happy  
having altered the Step Over menu to command-D and setting up command- 
E to open the VW.

Ray Horsley
Developer, LinkIt! Software


On Oct 4, 2006, at 10:25 AM, Ken Ray wrote:

> 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
>
>
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