Script Editor future (was Open Source Kickstarter Report Card)

Richmond richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Fri Aug 28 06:51:16 EDT 2015



On 08/28/2015 01:30 PM, Kay C Lan wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> I would be most interested to see a *coherent and numbered list* of these
>> "issues"
>> rather than a chorus of people saying how awful the scriptEditor is.
>>
> Off the top of my head:
>
> 1) copy & paste via keyboard
>      How many times have you copied from somewhere external and you can't
> use the keyboard to paste it into LC. Either you need to use the mouse+menu
> or the data isn't even there - in which case I find myself pasting the data
> into a text editor, copying it again and then pasting into LC. (this is
> more a long standing bug of LC and not just the SE)

Something very odd indeed on the Linux side: I can not copy script 
directly into an
office suite or the ThunderBird e-mail client (which I would like to be 
able to do):I have
to copy-paste into a bog-basic text editor, and then copy-paste from the 
text editor into whatever, losing all the contextual colouring along the 
way.

My point of comparison is with LC 4.5 on a PPC Mac running 10.5.7, where 
I can copy-paste
back-and-forth to my heart's content into Appleworks 6 or Clarisworks 5 
keeping
colourisation.

>
> 2) customiseable keyboard shortcuts
>      It's just nice and convenient to be able to allocate ANY of EVERY
> single menu item a keyboard shortcut. Time saver.

Not sure if that is the scriptEditor as such, or the IDE in general.

>
> 3) more script space, less wasted space
>      Because the SE doubles as the debugger it has a LOT of wasted space. I
> want my SE to be 90% text, the rest tools and nicities, like my TE. I want
> my debugger sort of the opposite, 40% script and the rest debugging info -
> typically I can't see enough variable values. As someone else pointed out,
> why can't I view Variables and breakpoints concurently when debugging? Why
> does the Error message need as much space as the Variable viewer? I've
> never seen one that's taken up more than two lines, and even then it could
> all be displayed on one line. Effecient workspace.

You can drag the sections about: I normally have my scriptEditortaking 
up almost
everything except for 1 line of the debugger.

> 4) autocompletion
>      The flexibility of not using explicit variables with the safety net of
> spelling them correctly all the time. Time saver.

Yes and No: I turn off autocompletion in my office suites as do not like 
the things second-guessing my intentions; especially as the suggestions 
are often-as-not different to my
intentions.

>
> 5) spellchecking
>      Can load custom dictionaries so whilst mine generally checks I spell
> colour correctly, for LC work I can make sure I spell it the other way.
> Time saver.

Yuck.  Maybe JUST for LiveCode reserved words, so the thing doesn't get 
in the way
of words such as 'colour' and 'sceptical'.

>
> 6) boilerplates
>      I can type in switch and a little popup will come up with switch3,
> switch3d, switch4, switch4d,... switch9, switch9d. I can either click on
> one or type switch5d and press return and a bare switch statement with 5
> case entries will be created for me including the default structure. If I
> didn't specify the d at the end, no default structure is included. Actually
> 99% of the time I use the switch default structure as a place to catch
> logic errors so my boiler place includes:
>      default
>          answer "A Case I Haven't Considered. Check the Variables." titled
> "Switch Case Error"
>          breakpoint
>      end switch
>
> All typed out for me automatically. Time Saver
>
> 7) Inbuilt scripting
>      Strange that for a scripting language this is listed. Take this SQL
> statement:
>
>      SELECT * FROM table WHERE f1 = "AA" AND f2 = "BB" AND f3 = "DD"
>
>      if I need to do this:
>
>      put "SELECT * FROM table WHERE f1 = "AA" AND f2 = "BB" AND f3 = "DD""
> into tQuery
>
>      it will not work because of the quotes in SQL have a different meaning
> to LC so I need to replace all those " with " & quote & " - except the
> first and last ". Yes, I appreciate I could do it manually with Find and
> Replace but that's slow, or I can modify LC to allow me to run a script to
> do that selective replacement similar to what I do in my TE, but I'm just
> surprised at how much easier it is to do im my TE and just a keystroke a
> way. Time saver.

Indeed, that whole thing about 'quote' is a major pain in the bum.

>
> 8) folding
>      The ability to collapse a handler, control structure, multiline
> comments down to a single line - an absolute godsend. Again I want the text
> I'm interested in to cover 90% or more of my screen. So many times,
> portions of what I'm focusing on are spread over just more than what is
> displayed in the SE - why is that? Copy and paste into my TE and most of
> the time I'm sweet, but often enough I wish I was able to collapse a 5 case
> switch statments down to a single line and remove the 4 line comment
> because then what I need to be looking at would all be viewable. Can be
> done with other languages. You wont appreciate it until you've used it.
>
> 9) bracket pairing
>      How many times has your code been in error because of a mismatch in
> brackets?

Just about every time :(

>   Every TE worth it's salt provides some sort of indication of
> bracket pairing, not just whilst you type the brackets, but also you can
> come back and click on a bracket and it's mate will be hilighted. Also, an
> unmatched bracket is highlited immediately, not when you go to Apply/Save.
> Time saver.

+1
>
> 10) search and replace remembered
>      The last 10 searches and replacements are stored, although I think
> that's only because I set it to 10. As most of my search and replace are
> regex, and I'm NOT very good at it, having these saved is extremely
> convenient. Nice feature.

+1

>
> 11) regex search pattern validation
>      Any serious work with text will at some time require a bit of regex.
> Whilst building regex search and replace patterns my TE automatically
> validates the code. To be fair, LC has a built in Regex Builder so you can
> test your regex prior to use, but this isn't quite as nice as having it
> automatically check your Find or Replace box entry. Nice feature
>
> 12) regex manual
>      Because I don't do too much regex, unless it's very basic I always need
> to refer to a syntax manual. My TE has one built in. Nice feature

Well . . . when it comes to manuals and documentation . . .
>
> 13) unlimited undo/redo
>      Enough said. Time Saver.

+1

I see very little undo at all . . .

>
> 14) versioning
>      Happens automatically locally. Can easily intergrate with Git or SVN
> systems. Essential for serious work.

Well, again, that's not a scriptEditor thing, that needs to be there for 
the whole IDE.

>
> 15) difference comparison
>      Once you've gone down the versioning, Git, SVN route you HAVE to be
> able to easily find differences and move chunks of text from one version to
> another. Essential for serious work.
>
> Again, that's only off the top of my head.
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Richmond.





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