Gadgets

[dunkers]

While poking around to see what's new with SE2008 (and if the multi-platform licensing costs have changed) I saw the free gadgets thing. The indentation line looked interesting enough to download and try, and then I noticed they're gadgets for VS.

Any chance of a SE version of these?

Incidentally, the screenshot of the indentation line shows the block indication that VS uses. Even very simple editors, for instance notepad++, have these now and I'd kill to have the same in SE - I find them very useful, which is why I've asked several times previously for them. Any chance of them turning up sometime?

[jimlangrunner]

At the risk of saying "Me, too!", well, Me, too!

The indentation guide is, quite simply, the best tool for the job.  In CodeWright (it's been 2+ years and I still miss parts of it) I had guides at 2nd, 4th & 6th indentation levels.  Made it very easy to find opens & closes of code blocks, midpoints, etc.  Very useful, as well, when a coworker (who just refuses to follow any formatting guidelines whatever) does work for me, and I need to reformat.

Yes, I know about beautify, code navigation and the vertical line features.  The vertical line I keep at column 80 to help me keep my code wrapped manually, and beautify & navigate don't work so well with VB6.  (Java, C++, HTML are great, by the way!)  But VB6 is 80% of my day job, so that's where I miss it the most. 

Thanks,
Jim.

[ScottW, VP of Dev]

I'm glad you're finding some interesting stuff in Gadgets. With all the many things to work on in SlickEdit, it is unlikely that all of the features in Gadgets will be implement any time soon. But it's great to know which of those features you find most useful.

Though SlickEdit doesn't draw a vertical line to show the current indentation, you can elect to draw a box around the current line with hashmarks that show the indentation levels. Select Tools > Options, then expand the Appearance > General node and set the value for "Current line highlight" to "Syntax indent ruler". I'll file a change request for adding the vertical line.

@dunkers: when you are talking about the "block indication that VS uses", are you referring to the boxes with the pluses/minuses and the hashmarks to show the block end? You can have SlickEdit draw the boxes using the Selective Dispaly feature (View > Selective Display) and setting it to "Multi-level" and selecting "Braces" or "Indentation". You don't get the vertical line or the hashmarks, though. That would be a real challenge for us at the moment.

[jimlangrunner]

Scott,

Very cool.  While I would still like the vertical line, the syntax-indent ruler is a nice feature that I'll use forever.  Half the tasks that I would use the line for are now are taken care of with that simple box highlight. 

Thank you.

[dunkers]

@Scott:

you can elect to draw a box around the current line

Indeed so, and very nice it is. However, it tends to obscure underscores so I had to drop it because I was getting confused by seeing two words where there was actually only one.

are you referring to the boxes with the pluses/minuses and the hashmarks to show the block end?

Sort of. I'm not interested in collapsing if/do/for statements but having a visual indication of the scope (for want of a better description), which is particularly useful if the structure covers more than one page. A very good example is actually the SE Defs tool window. If those dotted lines were in the main editing window it would be fantastic, but over in a non-edit window it's just a tease