when running with external editor, hide the editor text area

[processing-bugs]

Original author: b...@processing.org (June 06, 2010 22:55:40)

This bug automatically added from:
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=20

Comment from fry, 2005-05-12 19:38

setting 'use external editor' is confusing

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=9

[processing-bugs]

From Chris.Lonnen on November 22, 2010 23:15:12
Attached is a patch that, when external editor is checked, hides the textarea pane and adjusting the auto-scaling on the window to give 100% of new space to the console window in a resize event. It leaves the toolbar and code tabs visible. If the user wants to see the code, the user can slide the splitpane divider to reveal the code (greyed and locked for editing). When preferences are applied and it is not checked, the divider location, textarea size, and resize weight are restored to their current behavior.

[processing-bugs]

From Chris.Lonnen on November 22, 2010 23:22:16
Forgot the attachment.

[processing-bugs]

From f...@processing.org on November 24, 2010 15:33:05
Go ahead and check it in and I'll take a look.

[processing-bugs]

From Chris.Lonnen on November 24, 2010 19:01:44
Added in r7456. I'm leaving this open until you try it.

[processing-bugs]

From f...@processing.org on November 25, 2010 17:10:25
Hm, this one's not behaving well on the Mac. I wonder if this isn't the best idea after all, and that people should just make the editor window as small as they'd like instead.

Also wondering whether it makes sense to do this on a PDE level or if it's going to be a per-sketch thing.

...or if we should just keep it the way it was, and instead focus on getting the command line stuff to work better.

[processing-bugs]

From Chris.Lonnen on November 25, 2010 17:49:17
What's it doing? I've run it on two macbooks and both look something like the attached photo. I think this is clearer about what external editor mode does, but I'm not a UI designer. Cosmetically, it might be an improvement to shrink the y-dimension of the whole window by the same amount that the editor pane is shrunk to maintain a constant console size.

I'm all for improving the command line stuff, but if I'm remembering correctly it keeps invoking swing, and divorcing the compile process from the GUI was going to be a big pain.

[processing-bugs]

From f...@processing.org on November 26, 2010 01:18:42
Yeah, that's what it's doing, maybe it just /looks/ like it's broken. Hm...

[processing-bugs]

From Chris.Lonnen on November 26, 2010 01:24:23
I don't understand what you mean by broken, I suppose. What was the intended behavior?

[processing-bugs]

From f...@processing.org on November 26, 2010 01:27:42
No, that's the intended behavior as stated in the issue title. I just mean that it appears to not be the right solution. If someone were to accidentally check that box, they'd be completely baffled as to what was happening. Or if someone were looking over their shoulder, it wouldn't be apparent what's going on. It gives less of a feel of "running in a different mode where you can't edit" and instead is more like "the PDE is broken and the Editor area has gone missing."

[processing-bugs]

From m...@christian-thiemann.de on November 26, 2010 02:30:35
FWIW, I agree that this might cause confusion (especially because the tabs are still visible).

Maybe this would work:

1. Replace the split pane with the contents in the lower half (the console and error message display) and make sure the buttons (run/stop/etc.) are still there.
2. Add some text like "external-editor mode" to the buttons toolbar (or add a checkbox to the toolbar to toggle the ext-edit mode for this sketch).

Just my two cents.

PS: Oh, and another two cents... I like the idea of doing it as a "per-sketch thing"; that would be awesome and save me a lot of clicking when trying to "quickly test that little small thing in a new sketch" while working on "that huge project" in the external editor.

[processing-bugs]

From Chris.Lonnen on November 26, 2010 03:10:21
I was envisioning having the Processing editor open like this with the code itself open in the external editor. It reminded me of a control window for a video app. Maybe print bit of text to the console about external editor mode?

If this still isn't looking right, we could roll it back to where it was. The color change wasn't bad. Would a pop-up window, like Android mode, help?

[processing-bugs]

From f...@processing.org on April 16, 2011 19:32:40
Closing this one since the result just seems too awkward.

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