Object Edit Feature Suggestions
Sunday, August 6, 2006 by dragonmage | Discussion: Life, the Universe and Everything
Object edit is a good app, but it could be better. So this thread is for anyone to make suggestions for it. I'll keep bumping it for a while and maybe if enough people start requesting stuff we'll see some more development.
I'll start it off with TABS! In my case this would be super useful when trying to mod skins. Instead of having multiple windows with reference files and the one I'm working on I could just flip from tab to tab. Hotkeys for tab switching are a must, and mouse gestures would be even better.
I'm sure I'll think of more later but thats the big one. What can the rest of you come up with?
Reply #23 Tuesday, October 24, 2006 3:47 AM
Reply #24 Tuesday, October 24, 2006 7:48 AM
I use OE all the time . . but I can't see where it fits in Stardock's business model. If I were placing bets . . . I'd bet that OE will fade away . . .
Reply #25 Friday, December 22, 2006 10:15 AM
Reply #26 Friday, December 22, 2006 10:35 AM
| This is with 5imple by daniloOc. I don't want to pick daniloOc out, but I knew it happened with his skins. Other skins do it too. Older, non WB5 skins seem fairly immune. Might also be Firefox related, believe it or not. Switching focus from FF to OE makes the toolbar grow every time (on susceptible skins). |
ROFL TOOLBAR ELEPHANTITIS! Holy hell that's funny...
Reply #27 Friday, December 22, 2006 11:26 AM
On the subject of Stardock's interests in OE. I'm the author of OE, I am not an employee of Stardock, so there is no 'investment' per se, I get royalties yes, but if you think about where OE fits into the scheme of Object Desktop, you can be assured that that amount of money doesn't justify much time into Object Edit
. What little love it gets is more because I want it done than anything else. That said, I'll address some of these items, and we'll discuss them below. how's that sound ? Regarding some of the items:
* Tabs
I'm the one that has resisted this from day one. OE is intended to be lightweight and the addition of tabs, and all of the MDI cruft that goes with it was something I wanted to avoid.
* Maximized State
This can be addressed fairly easily, it's just an over looked bug.
* LineCount Color
This should probably be user selectable.
* Having to go through Syntax->Syntax Style in the menu to get to the syntax selection is very awkward.
There existed a way to deal with this, but it was removed due to UI concerns. (a right click on the status bar indicator of the style got the style menu)
* Ability to add toolbar buttons for your syntax styles would be nice as you use some more often than other.
I personally would prefer to add a toolbar button for 'styles' that is a popup of the styles you can select from
* Be able to have one syn files apply to more than one file extension. As it's now, one for HTML and one for HTM, awkward.
Awkward, yes, faster, yes. The reason it's done this way is to prevent having to load each Syn at load to dtermine the file. As it stands now, it does so using a quick 'does the file exist name style.syn', which is significantly faster than iterating all the syn's to determine if the style is supported by any of them, in addition to preventing collisions of duplicate styles.
* Be able to define escape characters. For instance PHP sometimes becomes oddly highlighted if escape characters are used
This is partially implemented in a build to be released.
* When you scroll up or down a document and your cursor happend to move outside the area of the scrollbar it will scrollback to it's original position
This is a 'feature'. The original code moved the edit point to the currently scrolled viewpoint, but this was determined to be an incorrect behaviour as you had not changed your edit location. I'm still not positive what the 'correct' behaviour is in this case. I'm open to input. When you scroll, what should the 'edit' point be if you haven't clicked to change it?
* When searching a document, begin to search from the beginning when you've hit the bottom
Already done for a future build.
* Be able to indent block selection of text with tab
Doable.
* Option to add/remove the shell context menuitem.
I assume you mean from the preferences menu? It's possible, but there is a rub. The call to do so requires administrative priveleges, so this *will* cause major hassles on Vista.
* Plugins
They add a 'tools' menu which allows you to run the JavaScript using the Windows Script Host. If it isn't showing up, make sure the OEPlugins.dll is regsvr32'ed.
* Compare / Diff tool
That's really an external tool. it's possible to include, but now OE is stepping well beyond the 'simple fast little text editor'.
* autoscroll on the middleclick
Implementing this in the application creates conflicts with the various mousedrivers. It was there and was removed because if broke Logitech's mouse drivers. I think this is best left inthe domain of the mouse drivers and leave default scroll functions in place.
* Growing toolbar Bug
This is a bad interaction with some version of WB and the custom drawn control. It should be fixed in the latest revision of WB, as well as in the next revision of OE.
* Highlight a word and right click for an option to look up the definition in online dictionary of choice.
Cool, Effective, doable. Implementation details, should it support a single preference, or should it be defined via the syn style ?
* UTF-8 support. Currently OE can only handle ASCII and UTF-16 unicode.
This is a side effect of using the built-in Windows support for Unicode. It's UTF-8 support is a little incomplete.
* Correct the Right-to-Left language support (UTF-16). Currently, editing RTL Unicode text in a mixed language file leads to corruption
I think this is the same as the above issue, but I could use a bit more detail to address it.
* if word wrap is enabled line numbers get off
KNown issue, mostly fixed for the next release, but there appear to still be instances where the issue can crop up.
Reply #28 Friday, December 22, 2006 6:17 PM
Reply #29 Friday, December 22, 2006 6:35 PM

It also must be a bug in the install script that OEPlugins isnt registered. I dont have that menu either.
And with the scrollbar thing, that 'feature' should be removed since it is very annoying.
Reply #30 Sunday, December 31, 2006 1:00 PM
| * Highlight a word and right click for an option to look up the definition in online dictionary of choice. Cool, Effective, doable. Implementation details, should it support a single preference, or should it be defined via the syn style ? |
Being defined in the syn style is a good idea, hadn't thought of that. That way you could have it search a site specific to the coding you are working on if you want.
I think there should be universal one selectable also (maybe even a list)independent of syn styles, for general definitions. I say list because you might want to set one up to search for just synonyms or antonyms etc...
Reply #31 Wednesday, January 17, 2007 12:35 PM
I'd really like to see UTF-8 support. I sent an support ticked to stardock last week actually about this.
| * When you scroll up or down a document and your cursor happend to move outside the area of the scrollbar it will scrollback to it's original position This is a 'feature'. The original code moved the edit point to the currently scrolled viewpoint, but this was determined to be an incorrect behaviour as you had not changed your edit location. I'm still not positive what the 'correct' behaviour is in this case. I'm open to input. When you scroll, what should the 'edit' point be if you haven't clicked to change it? |
I think that as long as the mouse button is held down the scrolling should not revert to either the cursor point or the last view port even though it leaves the client area.
And I'd also prefer that if the mouse button is released outside the client area the scroll should stop where it is and not revert back to any previous positions then either.
My point view is that I often use the scrollbar very quickly, I slam the cursor in the general direction I want to scroll the content, so the cursor doesn't always remain within the client area of the scrollbar.
Reply #32 Sunday, January 21, 2007 5:59 PM
| * LineCount Color This should probably be user selectable. |
Or at least use matching system colours and no hardcoded ones.
Reply #33 Sunday, January 21, 2007 6:34 PM
Reply #34 Sunday, January 21, 2007 7:05 PM
| I wish there was a little more complete documetation on writing the .syn files as well |
I would pay ten bucks just for that!
Reply #35 Sunday, January 21, 2007 8:14 PM
I know I do need to take a new look at OE, and maybe I'll be switching back. Going to install now...
Reply #36 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 9:50 PM

Reply #37 Wednesday, May 9, 2007 8:07 PM
Andy
Reply #38 Wednesday, May 9, 2007 9:36 PM
Reply #39 Thursday, May 10, 2007 8:13 AM
The tabs are a mere convenience than necessary IMO.
UTF-8 support is one of my biggest hopes.

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Reply #21 Tuesday, August 22, 2006 6:34 PM