SlickEdit Community
SlickEdit Product Discussion => SlickEdit® => Topic started by: NightStorm on July 02, 2007, 08:34:16 PM
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SlickEdit vs 11.0.2
On the "Auto-Complete" tab of "Tools->Options->File Extension Setup" I have "Enable auto-completion" (plus all its sub-options) completey unchecked for editing "c" files. Everything is turned off. Despite this SlickEdit continues to propose completions. Furthermore it "helps" me by changing what I type for a member to whatever is first in the list. So my editing frequently goes something like this:
I type:
ptr->
Here SlickEdit begins a lengthy process of finding the list of members of the structure that *ptr describes.
I continue:
ptr->memberEight<space>
SlickEdit flashes up the member list, sees that I've now typed the space, and decides that what I really want is the first entry in the list. (I am certain that it made that decision because it saw the trailing space that I typed prior to finding the matching entry in the member list.) Thus it replaces the above with:
ptr->memberOne
Given that I cannot disable auto-complete, my editing has become very, very frustrating. Lots of backspacing to replace SlickEdit's "helping" hand and/or lots of trying to fool SlickEdit into not doing autocomplete.
And then there is auto-wrap (but that is another story).
Is there a way to really and truely disable Clippy this "feature"?
Anyone? Anyone? ;)
TIA,
- Bruce
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Uncheck the 'Auto-list members' in the (v12: Context-) Tagging tab too.
HS2
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Uncheck the 'Auto-list members' in the (v12: Context-) Tagging tab too.
HS2
YES! Thank you.
And stupid me. It never dawned on me to look at the "Tagging" tab .. I thought it was an Auto-Complete function!
- Bruce
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I've been having some similar bother.
I've unchecked "completion on space" and "auto-insert matching parameter" but if I type "printf(" a dropdown appears with function names in it. I then press QUOTE and start typing in a message. Slickedit matches what I'm typing to something in the list and when I press space it deletes what I've typed and replaces it with it's best match.
I then need to delete what it's done and re-type what I actually want
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I think that (parameter) codehelp should be terminated anyway when a 'string-starting' char (or the 1st string char) is typed.
However, the 'string-starting' char clearly tells that the user doesn't want to complete the current arg with any existing variable.
Could be cool if the word-autocompletion popup is displayed instead the matching arg list.
HS2
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I also hate this 'helping' slickedit does, however, I have version 11.0.2, how an I disable this 'feature'.
I'm living in editor hell, it keeps rewriting what I write, and its terrible, I can barely type anything without it actually DELETING characters I type.
In what universe does a EDITOR DELETE what a user types?? I TYPED IT, ITS GODS WORD, NO PROGRAM SHOULD CHANGE IT.
So, how do I get rid of all this garbage in 11.0.2 version?
I did
"I believe the option you are looking for is Tools --> Options --> Languages --> Application Languages --> YOUR_LANGUAGE --> Indent --> uncheck Syntax Expansion."
And it still feels it should write my code for me.
Where else is this brain dead editor setup for this crap?
Thanks
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As far as I remember there are a number of coding assistance features available even in v11.
You should verify your 'File extension setup' regarding 'Code Completion' resp. 'Context Tagging'.
Note it's per extension. (I think this already applied to v11..)
HS2
BTW: I guess most SE customers payed their money exactly for the features you don't like.
Why did you pay money for a tool you don't like ? There are a lot of bare metal editors available for free ;)
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As HS2 already mentioned (and also discussed previously in this thread), on the "tagging" tab of file extension setup (V11), there's several things you can turn off - auto list members, auto list compatible values, auto insert matching parameter, auto list compatible parameters. You probably already saw the auto completion stuff on the auto complete tab.
Graeme
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This has became a recurring theme, that SlickEdit's Auto-complete is trying to help but getting in the way.
To fully appreciate and understand the situation, you have to understand why Auto-complete exists. SlickEdit was born to help programmers write code and to help them do their work fast. In the process, it grew a lot of separate features that help you write code fast: Syntax Expansion, Aliases, Word Completion, Symbol Completion are all examples.
The problem is that most users didn't know these features exist. The features were invoked through key bindings that people didn't take time to learn and thus didn't really learn about the features or how to fully utilize them. A lot of people emailed SlcikEdit to actually ask for features which we already had.
So, Auto-complete was put together to turn light bulbs on in peoples heads and show them that SlickEdit can do more for them. It was designed to be an reasonably unobtrusive suggestion mechanism, but given options that would let it do more than just suggest things.
One failure in the design of auto-complete was that it looked a lot like list-members and that confused people. Another problem was that it provided some of the same services as list-members, so users thought they had to deal with the way the dealt with list-members and didn't realize that auto-complete will go away as unobtrusively as it shows up as long as you don't push it's buttons.
But the biggest failure was in the GUI, because people seem to think that turning off this mechanism which suggests competions will turn off the feature. Telling auto-complete not to suggest syntax expansion does not turn off syntax expansion, it just tells auto-compete that you don't want to see syntax expansion suggestions, that's all.
The success of auto-complete is that it has achieved it's goal. It made features known to people that were previously used only by power users. The proof of that claim is this thread. Some people might not like it, but you do know more about SlickEdit now than you did before auto-complete.
In a future release, we plan on making auto-compete be more what users expect it to be instead of what it was intended to be. Along those lines, we plan on merging auto-list members and list-members into the auto-complete framework entirely. We plan on changing the settings dialog so that turning off a completion suggestion in auto-complete and turning off the same feature entirely is more obvious. I think it needs to be a drop-down with options like (Enabled and suggest completions, Enabled, Disabled, but suggest completions anyway, and Disabled entirely).
We realize that sometimes SlickEdit's completion features don't do the right thing. It can't be perfect, but there are options to tailor it exactly to your needs. The errors always stand out more than the successes. Nobody notices when the competion does exactly what they want, but when it causes you to have to back up and retype, I feel your pain.
Those of you who are still on v11, you should know that auto-complete and symbol completion have been improved a lot since then. You might just be running into old bugs with a feature that was relatively new at that time.
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I found this thread as a new SE user, going through the task of turning off all autocompletions and what-not.
I realize that the "auto complete luddites" such as I are in the minority. But I thought I would take time to explain the point of view of our small but determined tribe.
First of all, there are two kinds of people[1] in the world, those who think that "smart" editors that help you out with typing, and those who find it annoying. I will remark that I have noticed that the sheer joy of seeing the editor autocomplete syntax seems to belong mostly to beginning programmers.
However, I didn't come here to argue that point. The principle of "no help" editing is about focus. A fast typist is thinking while typing. I have been doing this for 35 years, so it is not a brag to say that I can do this while holding a conversation and looking elsewhere. I don't type letters or numbers on a keyboard, I type words. I type "newmodule". I don't think about how to spell "newmodule". I think that and type it. I type, and expect what I type to go into the editor.
Now, all of that has actually been the standard way to type long before computers. Very advanced (fast) typists will tell you this is how they work. The point of this is that advanced typists don't need direct feedback from the screen/paper. In fact, watching what you type actually slows you down. An occasional glance to see if you have accidently hit the caps lock or have your fingers on the wrong row is enough. I don't need autocompletion because it is actually faster for me to type the whole word or symbol than to have it autocompleted.
Ie., the secret to fast typing is to NOT have feedback from the screen.
Now imagine that there is a well meaning friend watching you over your shoulder. He/she is occasionally hitting keys to fix your spelling issues, typing open brackets because they are what comes next, etc. The net result is that you have to slow down. It is because it is less predictable. You don't know if you actually got what you typed. You don't know if perhaps the computer is waiting at a prompt "is one of these symbols what you really wanted?". In short, it forces you to look at and react to the screen, the exact opposite to what they used to teach you in typing school.
Now I don't mind turning off all the autocomplete features. I do mind (and end up discarding) programs that don't allow them to be turned off. However, what I, and typists like me REALLY need is just one switch:
[ ] Do not type for me or enter into "modes" without being asked.
Ie., go ahead and flash interesting status messages, put up lists next to what I am typing of alternate symbols, or whatever else you want. I can ignore them and others can use them. However, the minute the editor starts typing for me, or enters into a "mode" without being asked, it means that my flow is interrupted. A good example of a mode is a spelling corrector ("this word is not in the dictionary, change it yes/no?").
[1] There are two kinds of people in the world: those people who insist on dividing people into two classes, and everyone else :-)
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@samiam95124: That's a very good posting and explanation of your and maybe others way of thinking.
I really admire black belt typists like you. My skills in that field are rather poor to be honest.
However, thanks to SE I'm usually faster in getting things done than others who can just type faster than me. But that could be a current, local observation.
In addition when it comes to complex work e.g. dealing with large, legacy libs containing a huge number of classes, multi-level inheritance, etc. it'd take me 1000 times longer to finish my work without sophisticated coding support SE provides.
I can't simply remember all classes and their members exactly. But it helps a lot to select from a (correct) list.
Along with that it's sometimes not applicable to use the build tools to fix the related kind of issues.
Finally my personal experience is that I need much more time to think about what I'm going to do than to do it. With or without help from an editor..
Maybe it's all driven by the kind of work we do which requires different techniques/strategies to be successful.
I usually try to avoid to divide people into classes because it's always wrong ;)
I just tried to add my point of view which is a bit different.
HS2
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As I am so fond of telling my wife, it's only "help" if I want it. We've been talking a lot about how to support both kinds of users. While you can shut off most of our "helpful" features, you have to do quite a bit of searching to do so. Though it won't be in v16, we are looking at grouping those features together onto a single options page with a way to shut them all off, or any combination, very quickly.
We're also looking at the way features like Dynamic Surround work. We've discussed whether it should use common keys like Up and Down arrow or if it should use Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down instead.
Sometimes our choices have been driven by trying to make the feature more obvious, so users would know it is there. However, I think we can leverage the new Notifications system to provide tips and suggestions that let you know we have something that can help. For example, when you type "if" followed by a space, SlickEdit inserts the rest of the if statement. Instead, we could pop up a notification at that moment and let you know that we could complete the if and provide a link to enable that feature.
Please keep the feedback coming. We want SlickEdit to be able to run the way YOU want it to so that it supports YOUR style of working.
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The problem is, I code without looking at the screen, so I'll type say 5 or 6 lines of code without even looking at the editor screen, but when SE decides in its infinite wisdom to start modifying what I type, this presents a huge issue, as all the code I typed is now 'helped' to be wrong, extra }'s, )'s ('s IF's added crazy stupid stuff which people who cannot type, or cannot code apparently 'want' in an editor, I suppose I could hire someone to spoon my soup into my mouth too.
So the default for an editor should be to only do what you tell it to, no more, no less.
Features such as auto-feedme soup should be OFF by default, not ON, MOST people do NOT need help feeding themselves, or typing into a computer, when they type over 120 words a minute.
I've been using slickedit for many years, its when I re-install it on a new computer I have to wage this battle AGAIN and again! Every few years, upgrade computer, install SE, and bang, more and more solving of problems I don't have.
If there was another editor which had brief emulation with tiled windows, I'd be using it.
God help me if I ever "Upgrade", I can only imagine all the problems I don't have being solved by the latest 'version'.
Hey, theres an idea, why not have new 'version' REMOVE features???
I mean, you've spent all these years ADDING things which solve problems people DON't have, why not spend a few versions removing the bloat?
I'd pay for a new version with LESS junk!
Would love a nice SE version 3.0 without the old bugs, and without all the new 'features'.
Guess I could offer to pay McDonalds for a smaller size drink cup, same chance of happening.
More features is NOT good, look at MS Word, best version was like 10 years ago, current version has to hide all the 'helpful addon's' just so people can figure out how to use the thing.
Heres a hint how to tell when you have too many features:
IF YOUR OPTIONS DIALOG NEEDS A SEARCH FEATURE....you have too many options.
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Guess I could offer to pay McDonalds for a smaller size drink cup, same chance of happening.
You know that McDonalds charges $1 for any size of their soft drinks? Small, medium, or large - they're all $1.
On a more serious note, it's a common perception that only 10% or so (0% in some cases?) of the features of a complex program are really necessary. The other 90-100% are useless fluff.
What makes this a difficult problem for the software vendor is that the set of features that fall into the important 10% is different for different users.
When I upgrade SE it seems to pull forward pretty much all of my settings customization, which is what should happen. However, getting a fresh install configured correctly can be a challenge. Presumably settings export/import should help with that problem (though I'll admit that I don't use it enough to know how well it really works).
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I have been using SE forever and I find the auto complete features one of the most important reasons to use SE. Just as hs2 said, correct use of these features means I am more productive than any coder I have ever worked with (from a code input point of view). It's disingenuous to say SE has been adding features that that solve problems people don't have and it is arrogant (and incorrect) to state that people who use these features need help feeding themselves. The world is a big place and there are many different types of people and languages that SE supports. A simpler mechanism to turn off features and more reliable import processes is always welcome but try not to act like a spoiled child when asking for it.
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Having lots of features does not mean that a program\application is designed incorrectly.
For example, AutoCad. I took two classes just to get comfortable with the basics. They could have made a simple program with just a few features; draw arc, draw line & draw circle. However, I doubt that it would sell very well and they would yield a lot of market share to competitors.
There are many editors available out there with less features than SE: Boxer, Notepad, Notepad++, Sublime, and more. It's likely that one of those would suit you better. I doubt that SE is going to be re-written to suit you.
Lastly, you just might want to work on your approach to discussions on the forum. A tantrum really is not productive.
Jim
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@ealbers: Considering that you picked up on a five-year-old thread, I'm going to also guess that you are still using an older version of SlickEdit. We did make some mis-steps along the way with features being too ambitious, but newer releases have corrected many of those problems and added features that make it much easier to tune SlickEdit to your needs.
Using the feature to search options, you might discover that for that last several releases, SlickEdit has had an "All Languages" options page for modifying options for all the supported languages. You might also discover that SlickEdit has an import/export options page. I would suggest to anyone to export their options and put the exported options somewhere you will be able to keep track of them and not lose them between machine upgrades. For example, there's this thing called the cloud...
Here are few things you might want to tune, and you might be a lot happier in five minutes.
- Auto-complete: Tools > Options > Languages > All Languages > Auto-Complete > Enable Auto-completion. One click, and it's off, everywhere.
- Auto-surround: Tools > Options > Languages > All Languages > Auto-Surround > Enable Auto-Surround
- Auto-close: Tools > Options > Languages > All Languages > Auto-Close > Enable Auto-Close
- Syntax and alias expansion: On the Auto-complete page, you can disable Syntax Expansion on space and expanding aliases on space.
- Beautification: SlickEdit will beautify as you type by default, because our new beautifiers are just that good. Tools > Options > Languages > All Languages > General > Beautify...
- Comment wrap and XML/HTML wrap: Again, easy to turn off.
- Adaptive formatting: This is off by default now, but it was on for earlier releases of SlickEdit.
These features exist because most programmers want to eliminate the tedium and focus on the core qualities of the code they are writing. Very few of us can do that at 120 wpm, so I am very impressed and appreciate that you have chosen SlickEdit as your tool of choice. In fact, most other editors couldn't even keep up with that, so, that's a definate advantage for you.
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Those settings needing adjustment most frequently are good candidates for making a "favorite" in the left-hand pane of the options dialog.
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The best way to decide how to group features for a programming editor is to provide a good descriptive list of the proposed features and then ask as many programmers as possible to put the features into groups that make sense to them personally. Be sure to include programmers of all skill levels and domains (e.g., novices writing C++ under Linux, experts writing machine language under FreeBSD, commercial consultants writing Javascript under Windows, et exhaustive cetera. The more variety you include, the better the result).
Then, if you find, as you will(!) that some people make groups ABCD EF GHI while others group together AB CDE F GHI, make the final grouping AB CD E F GHI because it's much easier to click more check boxes than it is to figure out how t'buggery to NOT check PART of a box. And if there doesn't seem to be any consistency, break them all out as individual options for the same reason.
But if you do get some consistent groupings, kludge up a ui proto and let people try it out before casting the code in stone.
(My bona fides: my doc work was in psychology, not csci, ee, or maths. But I fed the kids and the cats and paid the bills while in grad school by writing code, and afterwards spent a fair while in the computer industry consulting on human factors.
And yes, slick's mix of unstoppable "helpfulness" and fragility bids fair to drive me out of my tiny mind)
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Here we go again, its been a year now, trying out the 30 day linux version,
Still no option to enable 'editor mode' where the editor acts like an editor and doesn't type for me.
SO I've diabled all the 'helpful' 'features' auto this auto that auto blah, but in html whenever I type
<table> and hit Enter, it decides the next line should begin, not at column 0, nono, that Enter key didn't mean enter, it wants me on column 11, yes, column 11, thats a prime number, yay, thanks,
And no matter what I type, I seem to keep being magically 'moved right' I mean I know trump is prez, but do you really need to force all code to be written to the right now?
So a question about the 'editor' how do you disable in html, the 'feature' that when you hit carriage return, it does not 'carriage return' (which comes from typewriters and means in plain English to return to the beginning of the carriage.....so again how do I get the Enter/Carriage Return key to behave as its name implies?
PS if Anyone knows a editor with brief bindings and tiled windows, please let me know, I will switch to that and you'll never have to see me complain about all your helpful features again.
Can I buy a version 2.0 or 3.0 of slickedit??? The one before all the help
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"<table>" kind of sounds like an HTML tag, but you talk about PHP. Did you change the settings for Tools > Options > Languages > Web Authoring Languages > PHP or HTML? What is your setting for Tools > Options > Languages > Web Authoring Languages > HTML > General > Indent style ? Try changing that from "Syntax indent" to "Auto" or "None".
If you want me to offer further suggestions, export your option settings (Tools > Options > Export/Import Options), and post the zip file and an example source file and instructions to reproduce the issue here, and I'll be happy to suggest what setting you need to tweak to accomplish what you want.
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Haza! It worked (yes, I had php originally, my html files are .php files to be pre-processed by the server before serving)....
Whew, now to figure out how to set tabs to spaces and a size of 2, right now its 5, I searched for tabs, a LOT of options have the word, I searched for 5 and while I appreciate the cobol 85 and fortran both have 5's in their areas, tabs don't seem to be in their either.
Man this editor is hard to set up, only emacs is more difficult, but emacs can't even smooth scroll without jumping so its right out, let alone do tiled windows properly.
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The tab options for HTML are under Tools > Options > Languages > Web Authoring Languages > Formatting > Edit... > Indent
The settings for PHP are basically in the same place.
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Feature request (what, more features?!?):
Search in Options could be better.
For example, search for tabs -- and you get a bazillion hits - mostly because it matches something in all of the languages.
Instead of fully expanding the index tree, add highlights on the node (especially the non-leaf nodes) where there are matches buried.
When a match is found in nearly every language, do not fully expand that subtree - as it adds a lot of noise ... just show the highlights in the tree. Probably, always expand the "All Languages" subtree when there is a match.
As a bonus, include the number of matching nodes.
So "Application Languages" would change to "Application Languages (x)" - where "X" is the number of immediate child nodes with a match (so in this case, "x" would always be <= 17).
Another possibility: Allow options to be sliced differently: Have an alternative tree based on feature instead of language: Under "Features -> Auto-Complete" you could change auto-complete settings globally, or dig into the setting for specific languages.
Another possibility: Let me delete or hide languages I do not use -- let me pick, or do it automatically. (Automatic: Hide each language until I've edited a file of that language at least once).
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Here's a tip about a little-known feature in the options searching. If you are looking for a language-specific option, include the language mode name. For example, try "C++ tabs" to narrow down to tab-related settings for C++, or "pascal upper" to find the setting to use upper-case keywords in Pascal.
Want to see all the tab-related settings that don't apply to C++, just search for "tabs" and collapse the "Languages" tree node.
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Thanks for all your help, I have purchased the Standard version again!
Love how it does not have all the 'features' of the pro version, I think I downloaded the pro version for testing....
Anyway, from version 11 to version 21.0.2!
Love the Linux/Windows/Mac all supported in one version