The MASM Forum Archive 2004 to 2012

Project Support Forums => IDE Development and Support => Easy Code => Topic started by: Bieb on February 01, 2005, 01:30:42 AM

Title: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Bieb on February 01, 2005, 01:30:42 AM
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.
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 01, 2005, 02:19:53 AM
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
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Bieb on February 01, 2005, 02:56:23 AM
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

NewLeftEdge = (FormWidth - ControlWidth) / 2
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 01, 2005, 03:17:45 AM
Thank you Bieb!

Ramon
Title: Feature Suggestions (Centering controls)
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 01, 2005, 12:29:56 PM
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
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Bieb on February 03, 2005, 11:48:30 PM
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.
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 04, 2005, 12:46:25 AM
Good ideas Bieb! I'll see what I can do.

Ramon
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Mark Jones on February 07, 2005, 02:01:02 PM
 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)


; 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.)
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 07, 2005, 04:29:28 PM
Mark,

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

Ramon
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Mark Jones on February 07, 2005, 07:07:52 PM
Yes, sorry about the length of that...
Oops, POLINK is supported, scratch that off the list.  :U
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 07, 2005, 09:19:49 PM
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
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Bieb on February 07, 2005, 10:24:08 PM
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.
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 07, 2005, 11:55:16 PM
Yes Bieb, this last version 1.00.0016 (released today) correct both.

Ramon
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Mark Jones on February 16, 2005, 03:19:16 AM
 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
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 16, 2005, 07:18:40 AM
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
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Mark Jones on February 16, 2005, 02:39:26 PM
Hmm that's odd, Ollydbg (http://home.t-online.de/home/Ollydbg/) always opens up blank for me. Maybe I have too long a path.
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 16, 2005, 04:56:33 PM
I'll have a look Mark (maybe the path needs to be shorted).

Ramon
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on February 16, 2005, 07:59:18 PM
A little bug doesn't pass the file to be debugged to Ollydbg. It will be fixed for next versions of Easy Code.

Thank you,

Ramon
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Mark Jones on May 20, 2005, 03:14:18 AM
Accessing the LPT/COM ports in NT/2K/XP is currently very difficult, requiring a third-party .sys driver or service. The MASM32 installation doesn't seem to have any I/O libraries either. Any chance EasyCode could implement something simple that works on XP also? :)

Attached are three "NT/2k/XP IO drivers" I found while searching the net. None are for MASM. Perhaps they might be helpful.

Regards,
Mark

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on May 20, 2005, 09:07:59 AM
Hi Mark,

I'll study your suggestion and attached code.

Thank you,

Ramon
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Bieb on June 01, 2005, 08:12:44 PM
On a smaller note, any chance for a Visual Basic like opening screen, where in addition to showing new project types, it also lets you open projects, and shows recent projects?
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on June 01, 2005, 10:56:11 PM
Okay, I'll see what I can do.

Ramon
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Hades on June 20, 2005, 11:37:01 AM
Ok, I noticed hat Easy Code uses UPX to auto compress it's files. But, if you're like me, I like to also use upx's other command line options. So I was wondering, can you implement something in the options dialog that allows you to edit what command lines that will be executed with the upx packer? Or an option to turn off upx, so people can just upx their files manually? Thanks. I'm new and am switching from Delphi to ASM, I like your IDE very much ;)
Title: Re: Feature Suggestions
Post by: Ramon Sala on June 20, 2005, 04:26:09 PM
Hi Hades,

In the Project->Properties, there is a check box named Compress the executable file (only Release mode), which can only be checked/unchecked when compiling in Release mode. Just uncheck it and there will be no UPX compression. About editting options for UPX, I'll see what I can do.

Regards,

Ramon