Feature Suggestions

[Bieb]

There isn't one yet, so I figure I'll make a thread to suggest things to Ramon.  Not that he hass to listen, but he might.  The one thing I would really like to see is center in form buttons for the visual editor.  That's really the biggest thing I've missed since switching from Visual Basic.

[Ramon Sala]

Hi Bieb,

I'll study how to do that. If possible (I think so), I'll implement it but I don't know when.

Ramon

[Bieb]

Thanks.  I don't know how complicated the actual implementation would be, but I'd assume the formula would be something to the effect of

Code Select Expand


NewLeftEdge = (FormWidth - ControlWidth) / 2


[Ramon Sala]

Thank you Bieb!

Ramon

[Ramon Sala]

Hi all,

I'm glad to tell you that centering controls horizontally and vertically has been implemented in Easy Code. It will be available in next version (probably released in a few days).

Ramon

[Bieb]

Very nice.  If possible, you might want to add the option to make a console project, which would make Easy Code a truly complete IDE for MASM32.  Another thing I've thought of, that would truly make it an incredible IDE(even more so than it already is, that is), would be if you added the option to export syntax highlighted source as HTML or BBcode.

[Ramon Sala]

Good ideas Bieb! I'll see what I can do.

Ramon

[Mark Jones]

 Hi. After happily using Easy Code for a few weeks now, I've compiled a "wish-list" of every feature/alteration I could think of. I'm just a novice and am curious what others think of these ideas.

* Would it be possible to build an "optimize data scope" tool, which shows global variables and structures that could be swapped for local vars/structs, freeing up file overhead?

* Tiny editor caveat: Am I just weird or does it seem awkward how the cursor "jumps" when inserting data at the beginning of blank lines or lines starting with tabs? i.e., try commenting out the rest of this code: (all lines should be tab-spaced)

Code Select Expand


; szTitle DB "Project 1", 0
szEasyCode DB "Easy Code is Great!", 0
szMyFirstVar DB "Hello world!", 13, 10,
"This is Easy Code!", 0
szMy2ndVar DB "Ramon is a great guy.", 0


* "Object as Datatypes" on Alt-Click?  i.e., point at a variable or structure in a call or used as an operand, alt-click, and its value is shown as valid/invalid byte, word, dword, long, byte ptr, word ptr, dword ptr, long ptr, offset, filetime, systemtime, etc. This might help noobs figure out when to use which identifiers, and which ones are appropriate for the given data.

* Popup help from the Win32 API help file?  If it is possible to pass a search query to the Win32 help file, it would be cool if we could right-click (or something) on an API name to popup the help for that call.

* "Replace spaces with tabs" tool?  We've all "ported" code between applications and experienced tab/spacing mismatch. Converting all 20h,20h,20h,20h bytes in the code into tabs and stripping the leftover spaces might be an elegant way to solve this. I think this sounds like a great second EasyCode project. :)

* An "indent-align" tool which puts all selected code on the same indent? Would this be useful?

* Editable syntax correction?  Maybe put the syntax operands into an editable listbox or file, so we can customize it to our liking. (i.e., make EAX come up in all caps, etc.)  Also I've picked up a nasty habit of writing ".end if", which creates an error. The ability to add syntax-correction for user-level goofs such as these would be handy.

Thanks for reading.  (Edited to remove old entries.)

[Ramon Sala]

Mark,

Your interesting (and long) list will be carefully studied. Thanks for your support.

Ramon

[Mark Jones]

Yes, sorry about the length of that...
Oops, POLINK is supported, scratch that off the list.  :U

[Ramon Sala]

Yes Mark, POLINK is supported and I'm going to do the same with POLIB. Don't worry about the length of your suggestions, they're welcome.

Ramon

[Bieb]

Oh, could you make it correct the capitalization of both global and local variables?  I've seen it do one or the other throughout the many versions, but never both at the same time.

[Ramon Sala]

Yes Bieb, this last version 1.00.0016 (released today) correct both.

Ramon

[Mark Jones]

 Hello! Easy Code is becoming really powerful. Here's a few more ideas for us to consider:

* Auto-backup feature. Perhaps backup to ZIP file?

* Can we pass a commandline / filename to the debugger?

* Could compile errors take us to the offending line in the code?

Regards,
Mark

[Ramon Sala]

Mark,

Your suggestions are always welcome. At the moment, the command line passed to the debugger is the exe file (with path) to be debugged.

Ramon