Post SyntaxEditor 4.0 Info Tip Feature Requests

Yeah, definitely woudl want the automatic parameter index tracking. I imagine it already would handle this, but it needs to be aware of nesting, so:

something(5,somethingelse(x,y),"bob")

Being able to push and pop context as you use a another function with params as a param.

-- David

this mightn't be the right place to request this. but i would love something like visual studio's debug mode, however "tip" that allows you to drill down into the instance of the classes properties etc..

or is something like this possible to do with the current framework?

Hi Karl,

We don't have that yet. The only issue with that is that it's probably only useful if you can grab debugging information. Does anyone have any resources on writing a C# debugger out there? We've not been able to find much of anything.

For resources on a C# debugger, I'm sure you've checked out SharpDevelop...It's open source, comes with a book on how it was written, and has an integrated debugger. http://icsharpcode.com/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx

Since I have already hooked up a debugger to the language I'm using and put on mouseover events, I do think it would be a cool feature to add the inline watch feature even if the getting of debug information is left completely up to the developer.

As for the method info tooltip, I like the ideas you've got there. It would be pretty cool to add a ParamInfo tag to the markup language so you guys can do all the bolding on your side of things.

Thanks!
Jared

No actually we haven't checked out SharpDevelop. We'll have to see what they did with the debugger. Since you are familiar with it though, maybe you could answer this. Is it a good idea for us to even work on a debugger? The reason for asking is that SyntaxEditor is working on one file at a time however a debugger needs to be aware of everything in a project and have access to that code. Therefore I'm wondering if the debugging features should really be done by whoever writes the IDE application that uses SyntaxEditor. We appreciate your thoughts on the subject.

Could you explain more what you mean by a ParamInfo tag, like maybe with an example.

>>>Is it a good idea for us to even work on a debugger?

Thats a good question and really one i can't answer for you, however let me explain the context of my first post in this thread. I am using the syntax editor in the context of a dynamic language and all my intellisense isn't based on parsing the document/project (like you would in C#) to work out what type something is.. its based on real time reflection or whatnot..

i.e the user types and runs

$a = "hello"

$a. when the type the dot, the intellisense they are getting will be for a string..

then they type

$a = [XML]"<bla><blabla>sdrfsdf</blabla></bla>"

$a. when they type the dot the intellisense will now be for an XmlDocument

so on the same way for the info tip functionality i want it like the vs.net dugger, where you hover over the varible and get this popup that allows you to see its properties and drill down mulitple levels (i.e of its an array or collection, you see all that, then can hover on one particulr item in the array, and then can see the properties of whatever type it is.

what would be the best way to do this on your part.

Well in the dotnet would you could just implement the full functionality yourself where i just pass in a dotnet object , and it would keep me mostly happy .. however if people wanted it to look, behave slightly different this wouldn't work, and it wouldn't work for use it cases on notdotnet languages and intergrating with different debuggers, also there are many cases when the pure dotnet reflection is not what i want, since the language i am using has an extensible type system, where you can just add properties and methods onto any class, standard dotnet reflection doesn't pick that up. So maybe you'd want to just provide the GUI framework, extensible enough for having a variety of columns, bolding icons, choosing which nodes can be expanded etc, and have a event sort of mechanism, where the control will ask the developers code for particular items, whether a sublevel can be expanded, and again an event when somebody expands that it calls the developers code that takes care of populating it.. also this might be too much work for some users who are just using standard dotnet stuff, so like in the intellisense you have a variety of helper methods to allow people to be lazy , and not hae to do the reflection themselves...

-Karl

I tend to agree that a C# debugger is outside the scope of the product, and IMHO, even outside the scope of the .NET Languages add-on. But I do think providing the 'hierarchial' tool-tip and some kind of interface to provide data would be a good fit.

Although #Develop's texteditor control isn't quite as nice or as robust as this one, they have a pretty decent project going over there. I particularly like the fact that it works with Mono, which I would be willing to pay a little more for if we were able to keep the rich functionality and ease of use of the SyntaxEditor.

As far as a ParamInfoTag here, I think it would be cool to be able to specify which parts of the tooltip markup are parameters, and specify the delimiter and endtokenid or value somewhere, then have all the bolding done for me.
<span>functionname(
<span color='blue'>string </span>
<span color='black'><functionparameter>username</functionparameter>
<span color='blue'>int </span>
<span color='black'><functionparameter>userid</functionparameter>
</span>

This would probably get pretty tricky with function call nesting...It could be it doesn't make sense to do it this way.

Finally made the purchase today...The great support I've gotten made it a no-brainer.

Thanks!
Jared

Good info, I've added the debugging tooltip to the TODO list.

I tend to that you should avoid including a debugger in your tool but if you want you can read about how to make a c# debugger here.

[Modified at 10/27/2006 04:02 PM]

i agree in many ways, though in my case, i just want this visual ability of the vs.net debugger, my scenario is not actually doing a CLR level debugger but more in a dynamic language visually looking at in memory objects.