New interface design (with pictures!)

[cannikin]

Hey guys,

I've been working with the IDE now since version 0009 I believe. I finally sat down and sketched out what I think would be a beautiful overhaul to the UI for our favorite IDE.

The biggest change would be to the editor itself. Right now I always use an external editor and it's really only to get some pretty basic functionality which would now be included right in the Arduino IDE itself:

• Line numbers (with an option to show/hide)
• Code folding
• Typeface update to antialiased Menlo (on the Mac) or Consolas (on Windows)
• Change your code coloring theme (screenshot uses Twilight) including swapping the white/black background

There's the addition of a drawer on the left that contains all of your Sketchbook files as well as examples and library code (all of which are expandable/collapsable). The drawer can be resized or hidden completely.

A search bar at the upper-right. By default it would search the file you're currently editing but would have a little dropdown of options for searching all open tabs or all files in the Sketchbook (or examples or libraries).

The terminal is now aliased Monaco (Mac) or Courier New (Windows). The terminal can be resized or hidden completely (running a Verify or Upload always opens it again).

Board and port are persisted in the footer.

I haven't sketched up what the serial monitor could look like yet. Assuming this ticket doesn't immediately get closed with a "you suck" message, I can add one soon. :)

Granted this design is 100% Mac focused. I'd be happy to do one that fits with the Windows Metro theme and a Gnome/KDE version as well.

I love the Arduino and the existing IDE is one of the things that makes it such a pleasure to work with. I'd just like to refresh the frame a little bit while keeping that wonderful core functionality alive and well!

[ryanthejuggler]

Nice mockup @cannikin. I agree that the UI needs an overhaul. It looks like your mockup is Cocoa-specific and might not work well cross-platform, but it looks awesome!

One thing that I've used for personal projects is RSyntaxTextArea. Gives you a lot right out of the box.

Maybe if this idea isn't widely accepted then someone could create a Swing fork of the IDE.

[ffissore]

@ryanthejuggler I see RSyntaxTextArea uses JFlex for syntax highlighting. I'm not expert: can you tell me if this means that I should generate the tokenizer in advance? That could be a problem because we inject keywords as you add libraries, so we don't know evey possible keyword in advance

[ryanthejuggler]

In general it looks like the tokenizer is designed to know the keywords in advance. However, it should well be possible to dynamically edit the tokenizer. All you need to do is regenerate the tokenizer and update the text area with the new keywords. Just because they define their tokenizer with static Java files doesn't mean we have to---it should be pretty easy to write a custom tokenizer generator based on a list of keywords.

Due to the fact that we have to refer to the language by its name, we may have to implement some kind of cache invalidation** (e.g. textArea.setSyntaxEditingStyle("text/arduino_139447688")) to ensure that the text area updates itself. I suspect we may be able to get along without it but time (and testing) will tell. AFAIK (unless it's changed in a recent version of Arduino) you have to restart the IDE anyways to get a new library to take, so this becomes a non-issue---the tokenizer will be recreated anyways upon startup.

I've been getting by on the included languages and have not played with the custom syntax, but if this issue gets accepted (and we decide RSyntaxTextArea is the way to go) then I'd be willing to do the work myself.

** I know this is the wrong term for it, but it's basically the same thing: changing the name so that the computer recognizes it as a different resource.

[heldersepu]

Yes the IDE needs a face lift!
Out of those what I find most useful is:

• Code folding

I find myself jumping from Notepad++ to the Arduino IDE all the time.

[tschertel]

Any news on interface improvements??
IDE really needs it.

[Nandox7]

Hey, will this ever happen?
The current IDE is dreadful, specially when working on a project with multiple files and on a small screen like of a laptop.

[ffissore]

Thank @cannikin for the proposal. The Java IDE has been screen shot so many times that we just can't change its UI without disrupting existing tutorials/articles/books
Still, this issue brought @ryanthejuggler propose RSyntaxTextArea, which is available with the hourly builds http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software#hourly

[tschertel]

@ffissore, I understand that sometime UI will change, right?
@cannikin proposed really good improvements. Everyone in community would be thankful for this changes.

[ffissore]

No, UI will not change as proposed. Only tiny little parts of it, to accommodate new features

[cannikin]

How "hard" would it be for someone to create their own IDE from scratch? (I realize asking how hard something is is a bit of a loaded question!) For example, is any of this exceedingly difficult to create from scratch: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Hacking/BuildProcess So difficult that it just wouldn't be worth it?