Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

General Discussion GSOC 2013

Manindra29

Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

in General Discussion • GSOC 2013 • 5 months ago

Hi everybody!

There's one feature of popular IDEs that I've always missed in the PDE, which makes me switch to eclipse whenever I think of writing a big sketch. Last year I had developed a live syntax and compilation error checking feature for the PDE which now ships with Processing as Experimental Mode. It was appreciated, but it mostly benefits users who are learning to code in Processing. I have always felt that it still isn't good enough to really attract advanced Processing users and make them choose the PDE instead of eclipse for writing sketches. The job was half done. The most sought after feature was still lacking.

This year I want to participate in GSoC to implement just that - Intelligent Code Completion

I've been working on the idea since the past several months and here's a preview of things I've got working and what you can expect:

Features I plan to implement:

Intelligent Code Completion for the sketch code as well as 3rd party libraries.
Code refactoring - One click renaming of variables/methods/classes
Processing reference/javadoc integration - similar to javadoc help in eclipse during code suggestion.

So what do you guys think? I would love to get your inputs on this. Please feel free to suggest any other feature/interface ideas.

About Me:

I'm Manindra, an undergrad from DTU, India. I've been involved with Processing for nearly two years. I've developed Sketch Outline and Color Selector Plus tools for Processing. My recent contributions to Processing have been:

Integrating XQMode and DebugMode projects of GSoC 2012 into a single mode as Experimental Mode.
Removing Processing's dependency on Sun JDK, by using eclipse JDI. What this means is that Processing will no longer require the Sun JDK to run, only the Sun JRE. This is still under testing, you can check it out in the latest github repo.
XQMode - GSoC 2012

Cheers!
Manindra

Replies(8)

in_digo

Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

I kinda have code completion working for all java functions including a java doc help window, and keeping track of what you wrote in your sketch (Virtual Model of your Classes, Methods, Fields) also based on reflection. I first based it on your outline plugin but later switched to the original eclipse parser since it can also handle not complete code. Have a look in my thread in the GSOC section. I didn't publish the latest version, since I still have to work on some regexp conserning completion when you have something like "obj1.method(obj2.test()).field." but I will in the next days... I wrote the completion tool in a way that allows different types of completions and live help systems, so there could also be a completion when selecting Color (a color chooser) or selecting a font, or what ever ...

So quite simlar to what you have in your video....

I think you did an awsome job, starting to create a more user friendly editor with XQMode / outline so m aybe we could team up and create something even more awsome, don't know how this works within GSOC but there should be a possiblity !?!

clankill3r

Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

I say team up and go for it :)

spacewalk..

Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

I'm working on some processing code and would like to use a more fully featured IDE. It looks / sounds like Eclipse is the best tool for that (for things like code completion, synced help reference, maybe even code folding).

Since you mention using it, can you point to some how to's on how to setup it up to work this way for Processing code in Eclipse?

And knowing how to get your tweaks into the PDE would be good too.

Thanks and the above video looks good.

Manindra29

Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

@in_digo, I'm sure teaming up would get things done faster. But I don't think Google allows more than one individual to work on a single project under GSoC: http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2012/faqs#group

@spacewalker, Here's an excellent tutorial from the Processing wiki for getting Processing sketches to run with Eclipse: http://processing.org/learning/eclipse/ Remember that you'll be writing pure Java code in Eclipse. If you require further assistance, please start a separate forum thread.

spacewalk..

Re: Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

Thanks Manindra29, but that page says it's for 1.1. That's why I asked about getting it to work on the current version 2.0b8 - has it changed at all with the new version. And I know nothing about Java itself yet (this includes classes, paths, and PApplet etc).

I'm willing to dive in though just to have a more featured IDE, but my lack of Java background might be a roadblock in trying to figure out why things don't work at some point...

Thanks for the info.

velvetkev..

Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

This would be amazing, especially if it will work with libraries.

Good luck!

spacewalk..

Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

Just so folks now, the page you referred me to ( http://processing.org/learning/eclipse/ ) mentions at the end of it to see another web page that has a good write up on how to use Eclipse with Processing sketches. That page they link to is: http://creativecoding.org/en/beyond/p5/eclipse_as_editor however that page no longer exists.

Thus I use the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine (no, I'm not making this up), to find the last cached copy of that page. Apparently, after Jan 18, 2012 the page appears to have been removed, so this is the last time it was seen. So here is THAT cached copy link: http://web.archive.org/web/20120118072336/http://www.creativecoding.org/en/beyond/p5/eclipse_as_editor

You can find your own OLD pages here for practically anything: http://web.archive.org/web/ (Known as the Internet Archive WayBack Machine)

in_digo

Re: Intelligent Code Completion for Processing - GSoC 2013 Idea

5 months ago

True but I meant to have different proposals which discribe parts of a connected system. As I wrote, I already have the autocompletion kind of running (some features missing and some bugs still) . So I will publish it anyhow. Its not directly connected to my GSOC proposal (more a part of it). I just wanted to let you know that I am also working on it so we can prevent doing the same thing twice.

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