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Topic: Environment (Read 1130 times) |
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tomek
 
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Environment
« on: Aug 3rd, 2002, 10:30pm » |
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Opening Note: Proce55ing is awesome! Thanks!
The environment is simple and it should stay this way, but here are three suggestions for small additions:
1. Present feature is great and deserves its own button next to Run.
2. Syntax highlighting/coloring is a lot to ask for, but the editor would benefit from a limited version that uses different color for comments. It also makes it visible at a glance which students comment the code...
3. Create a new sketchbook folder feature should be somewhere there so one's work can be nicely organized. I tried to create a new folder by entering a path but it seems to blow up on Windows 2000. Not sure if this is a bug, err... issue or this functionality is not there?
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fry
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Re: Environment
« Reply #1 on: Aug 4th, 2002, 1:03am » |
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1. hold down shift and hit run  sorry, not documented..
2. editor is high on the todo list (as mentioned elsewhere), i think it's the single worst thing that really keeps it back from being useful for more serious work.
3. yeah, paths in the editing area is a bug. but adding a method for organizing would be an additional feature. for the time being, when you're not running p5, you can probably move a couple projects to a subdirectory and they'll show up in a submenu. let us know if that doesn't work.
3b. a related bug for the directory stuff is that you can't save something from another directory in sketchbook into your own.. so attempts to save an example into your sketches dir will blow up as you describe..
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Martin
    
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Re: Environment
« Reply #2 on: Aug 4th, 2002, 7:38am » |
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re: present
wouldn't it also be great if it has some sort of a lock feature? presenters wouldn't want people to be hacking around and about the computers but rather want people to interact / look at the designs. hehe.
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adrien
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Re: Environment
« Reply #3 on: Aug 4th, 2002, 12:24pm » |
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So here's my big list of bugs and feature suggestions for P5. Currently running this under MacOSeX 10.1.5. Some of this is bugs, most of it is suggestions.
1. remove ".DS_Store" from file listings (and other possible invisble files...)
2. already mentiond was the bug with not being able to move the insertion point around with the arrow keys, but I will mention it again, because it's annoying. Oh, and the editor winder resizin' thingum too.
3. fix [space = underscore + space] problem in file name editing
(currently, when I type a space in a file name, it gives a "_ " not a "_") I like the idea of replacing spaces with underscores. One less thing i have to remind my students.
4. command-R for Run is fine, command-P is Ok for Present, but Stop should be command-period and/or esc. Ok, if you THINK about it, it's T for Terminate, but in the graphical UI it's a "Stop" button like on a CD player, not a "Terminate" button like on a ... Escape should also close the Presentation mode.
5. ability to locate 'sketchbook' folder in another location (for instance I would like to be able to save it in ~/Documents/P5/) and use an alias back to the application folder to point to my stuff (i tried this, but horror of horrors, P5 didn't start, gave an error message: "blablasomethingunhappynogood"). Or a pref pane to decide where the sketchbook folder is located. In a Lab environment, where students are saving their work on zip disks, various sundry harddrives, the network, (or often not at all), it might be useful to have some kind of "define my home" command to begin to work out of their portable sketchbook.
6. UI ideas:
6a. move the "save" dialog box thingum to the upper area (around where the current file name is shown.)
- move the open/save/export/new buttons to this area as well.
- leave the run/stop buttons where they are. if in future versions, there is a code cleaner button, or a syntax checker button, they can be here too
- Parsing errors and whatnot are fine where they are at the bottom.
- console, belongs at the very bottom
This would give a clear top-down order of information: file name and other file saving information at the top, the file itself and the various buttons associated with manipulating it's contents in the middle, and additional information about the file (such as parsing errors) at the bottom.
otherwise the graphics of the UI are beautiful. very clean, very nice.
6b. possibly provide a simple split screen DBN type interface, at least for "beginner" mode. Hell, maybe for the advanced mode, too, I liked it.
Hmm, maybe a little option to scale up or down the output display (say, in multiples of two so it's clean) so that working on "big" projects is easy even in split screen, and one could scale up the output to get a closer look if necessary.
as a teacher, it would be helpful to be able to have the authoring UI able to run in present mode, that is, full screen. It will really help my younger students (and myself too!) stay focused on the task at hand, and not have one's attetnion distracted by, i dunno, surfing the web for porn at the same time.
7. syntax parser/error messages/whateveryoucallit, could be a bit more complete. Perhaps it could provide the possiblity of getting more information about the type of error (a hyperlink to an "what does this error mean?" database ?).
8. don't listen to what I have to say, ignore all the feature suggestions, because things should stay as simple and clean and minimalist as possible.
Is this enough? This is what they mean by alpha testing: writing 500+ word long comments with silly ideas for features... right?
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Signature: Signatures are displayed at the bottom of each post...
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adrien
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Re: Environment
« Reply #4 on: Aug 4th, 2002, 12:31pm » |
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Oh, and the saving process should be modified a bit:
New projects are autmoatically given a random mumber name, which is fine, but the first save should give the option of giving it a real name, just as the finder (or UI of your OS of choice) does.
and possibly giving the option to decide where to put it.
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Signature: Signatures are displayed at the bottom of each post...
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tomek
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Re: Environment
« Reply #5 on: Aug 5th, 2002, 3:50pm » |
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Some more on saving and the editor.
Here is what works for me (on Windows 2000) for organizing my sketches. I created a new subfolder next to 'examples' and 'default'. Each time I want to start a new work I make a copy of any existing sketch into that new directory and rename it. The renamig has to be done on both the sketch folder and the file inside. Once that is done I restart Proce55ing and it shows in the menus so I can open it and edit. So that's my hack for Save As in a new directory...
Now, about the editor. Essentially there will be probably two kinds of users. One type is absolute (programming) beginners that will benefit from having it as simple as possible, so as long as it is bug free it will be just fine the way it is (in my opinion). The other type is power users that have significant programming experience and are accustomed to sophisticated editors. They will always want more features. One way to satisfy their needs with little work is to create 'include file' command (as Flash has it) that allows people to use their own programming editor of choice. This might become very desirable once the 'advanced' mode is available and people will start writing full Java extensions to Proce55ing programs.
I am trying to provide ideas that don't require much work...
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barikan
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Re: Environment
« Reply #6 on: Aug 11th, 2002, 12:22am » |
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I can't copy the error message which is below the text area, copy option(..paste to forum) should be available for the rapid communication and development.
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fry
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Re: Environment
« Reply #7 on: Aug 13th, 2002, 4:45pm » |
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re: lock feature for present. you might notice a dimmed out "Export to Application" in the file menu.. this will basically make a version of your app that's all packaged up and ready to go for a more formal presentation, like a class exhibition or something like that, which would do a better job of locking the presentation mode.
re: DS_Store from file listings.. where does that show up.. in the sketch menu? that would be an easily fixable bug if that's the case.
re: editor problems: insertion point and editor resizing.. i'm gonna try to find a quick hack for these, but they might take a while, unless anybody is a good java hacker and wants to start fiddling with jedit. also for the time being i'll try to make it simpler to use an external editor (like bbedit) until the editor improves.
re: underscore/space.. that's a bug. will fix.
re: ctrl-t for terminate/stop is bad, sure.. the real problem is that escape isn't closing presentation mode on the mac. that'll be fixed soon.
re: sketchbook in another folder.. this is a tougher call. the general plan is that we're going to the ability to set your username when using the environment (right now, your username is 'default', thus the directory named 'default'). this way it's more usable for a lab environment. also that the sketchbook folder will be able to be synced to a network server or web site (oh my!) but that's all coming for beta.
re: ui ideas. some interesting stuff in there, though bug fixes will be taking priority of course..
re: syntax error messages.. would be nice to have something better for them, but it's a huge and difficult issue.
re: project naming.. we don't like the ide setup where you have to name everything before you can actually do anything. or being pestered for the name on first save. i'd rather that it just be simpler to have something saved, and if you want to name it, that can be done easily.. one thing that should be mentioned--if you click the title of your sketch, that puts the environment into rename mode. that way you can get at it quickly.
re: copying the error messages from the console window.. the console window sucks and was thrown in at the last minute before alpha, so it'll have to get better. but for the time being, in the lib folder, you'll find two files, stderr.txt and stdout.txt which contain the contents of everything that's spewed past.
re: advanced users, see the comments for the editor stuff above. want to keep people happy, though i'll stop at turning p5 into a full-blown ide. if folks need that much power, then it's likely they can figure out codewarrior, jbuilder, etc.
re: sketch organizing.. this is a tough problem and i'd for the time being rather leave it to the operating system. you can move things around and make directories as necessary, and needn't even rename sketches moved from your default dir to other dirs you've created. but there just doesn't seem to be a good ui for dealing with this.. i'm thinking of how much trouble beginners have with actually understanding file open/save dialogs, or how wretched the bookmark organizing features are in netscape or ie (as another interface for organizing items and folders)
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Dimitre
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Re: Environment
« Reply #8 on: Nov 7th, 2002, 2:59pm » |
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I would love a shortcut to go down in history, like multiple undos, or adobe photoshop history (ctrl+alt+z)
Congrats! proce55ing is very useful!
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sportebois
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Re: Environment
« Reply #9 on: Dec 21st, 2002, 12:53pm » |
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Hi
A.)
a time saver would be some find/find next shortcuts. I'm used to Director, and its Ctrl+F/G/H :
Ctrl F open the somewhat usual find/replace dialog box.
But the features I'm really missing while typing code os the Ctrl+H, which find the next occurence of the selected text. Ctrl+G does a 'find Next'... this is really helpful!
I don't worry what the shortcuts are, some will prefer some function keys like F5, F6, F7 or whatever... I don'tbother the key, I'm just missig the feature (and doing only the 'Find next occurence of the selected text' doesn't prompt any dialog, it just look what is selected and go to the next trunk of script with this text...
B.)
I may be missing something - I'm still a p5 newbie - but is there a way to work with multiple files, with somehting like a #include, to organise the classes in different files, helping versionning, keeeping script size reasonnable, and making things more useful ?
any tips I've missed?
Ayway thanks for the tool, it's amazingly fast to learn and very very efficient!!
great job guys!
séb
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fry
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Re: Environment
« Reply #10 on: Dec 21st, 2002, 7:59pm » |
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re: editing command keys, noted and added to the list.
and as for external files, it's on its way.. just haven't had time to take care of it just yet.
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franklin_mint
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Re: Environment
« Reply #11 on: Dec 23rd, 2002, 7:08pm » |
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First off, proce55ing is great. I've got a lot of experience with java, but I like using the editor instead of an IDE. It's so easy to just open it and get going.
One little request. I'm using it on Mac OS X, and the editor has antialiased text. Maybe make it an option in the properties file?
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fry
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Re: Environment
« Reply #12 on: Jan 2nd, 2003, 6:10pm » |
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hm, i can see where that would be a bit annoying for code. for the anti-aliasing i'm at the mercy of how swing decides to deal with text in java on the mac. meaning, i think it's out of my hands, unless any of the mac java hackers know better.
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franklin_mint
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Re: Environment
« Reply #13 on: Jan 6th, 2003, 7:48am » |
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You could overrid e the paint method in your JTextPane.
public void paint(Graphics g)
{
Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g;
g2.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_TEXT_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_OFF);
super.paint(g2);
}
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| « Last Edit: Jan 6th, 2003, 7:49am by franklin_mint » |
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fry
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Re: Environment
« Reply #14 on: Jan 6th, 2003, 6:15pm » |
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cool, thanks for the tip. i'll see if i can hack that into 48.
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