happy list of enhancement requests

[vonglockenspiel]

First off, this is a very warm hello from Onkel Gustaf from Bavaria (now living in Orange County). You also have a warm hello from Onkel VanDerValk in Amstelveen.

Now for the business, ja? There are some enhancements that need to be done to TopStyle. When you have the Bereitschaft, please see if these things are possible to do:

1. Allow editing any file without displaying doof error msgs. Definitely allow all web related stuff: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, ASP, ASPX, JSP, PHP, Perl, Python, SQL, and Apache Konfiguration files.

2. Allow defining the "current line" properties: allow setting the color of the current line, allow replacing dashes with dotted or single thin line instead. The dashes are Ablenkende! (DISTRACTING!!!)

3. Show indent guides. Allow configuring the color of it. Use 1 pixel dotted lines in light gray by default.

4. Allow setting caret style, one shape for insert mode, one shape for replace mode. Have following shapes: block, half block, thin vertical line, thin horizontal line under character. Also, allow stopping the caret from blinking. A blinking caret is like an ungeduldiger Trottel (an impatient idiot who wants attention).

5. ZenCoding - seamless integration!!! SEAMLESS!!! Nahtlose, ja? We should be able to type something, hit a (configurable) shortcut key, for example Ctrl-E, and expand the abbreviation we typed. Right now ZenCoding requires displaying the beschissen (sh*tty) and huge tabs. Nein! No need for tabs! I want to use my Tastatur! (keyboard, ja?)

6. Make the panels behave like Visual Studio, where they verschwinden (disappear, ja?) to the left or the right once they are not being used. That way we could have vertical tabs on the right and left and when clicking on those, the appropriate panel would open. I have noticed that I spend half of my time hitting F4 to clear the screen, and then F4 again to access stuff. I am an old man Stefan, I do not have time to click all day! Dies ist nicht akzeptabel!!

7. During installation allow adding TopStyle as an entry in the right-click menu, so that a file can be opened with TopStyle right from the Windows file manager. That would be so frisch, nützlich and gemutlich!

8. When an update of TopStyle is published, provide a list of what changed. You are a hard-working man. We want to know what to thank you and congratulate you for!

In zusammengefasster (summary, ja?) I have to say that I like TopStyle very much, but there are some features that you need to add so that Sie können aufholen (you can do the catch-up) with editors that use Scintilla. You must catch-up Stefan, and I don't mean the tomato-paste that kulturlosen ungehobelt Americans put on their "Hott Dogg" - I mean in the Technologie und Kultiviertheit way. You know - Eleganz und Macht!! Ja? Ja! Ja!!!

Vielen Dank (thank you) for your work and I hope you find time to add these features to make me, Onkel Gustaf Von Glockenspiel, very glücklich and fröhlich (happy and cheerful, ja?) with TopStyle.

Much happiness and cheer to you for your work!
G von G

[TopStyle Support]

First off, this is a very warm hello from Onkel Gustaf from Bavaria (now living in Orange County). You also have a warm hello from Onkel VanDerValk in Amstelveen.

Now for the business, ja? There are some enhancements that need to be done to TopStyle. When you have the Bereitschaft, please see if these things are possible to do:

Thanks for this extended list of enhancements!

1. Allow editing any file without displaying doof error msgs. Definitely allow all web related stuff: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, ASP, ASPX, JSP, PHP, Perl, Python, SQL, and Apache Konfiguration files.

The "doof error msgs" you're referring to are coming from Internet Explorer in the Preview Panel. Most of the time, these are the exact same errors you would see when you open your document in Internet Explorer itself, because it isn't pre-processed by PHP (or ASP, or JSP) yet.

My advice is to use Server Mappings here: Options (F8) > Preview > Mappings. Because when your PHP (or ASP, or JSP) documents are pre-processed by some web server, the error msgs disappear (and you'll get a more realistic preview, too).

Alternatively, you can disable those error msgs here: Options (F8) > Preview > "suppress dialog boxes and error messages displayed by preview".

2. Allow defining the "current line" properties: allow setting the color of the current line, allow replacing dashes with dotted or single thin line instead. The dashes are Ablenkende! (DISTRACTING!!!)

Starting with 4.0.0.84, you can change the color of the current line here: Options (F8) > Editor > Color Coding > Current Line Color.

If you want to get rid of the dashes, you can do so here: Options (F8) > Editor > Outline Current Line.

3. Show indent guides. Allow configuring the color of it. Use 1 pixel dotted lines in light gray by default.

You need to turn on Hidden Characters here: Options (F8) > Editor > Hidden Characters.

5. ZenCoding - seamless integration!!! SEAMLESS!!! Nahtlose, ja? We should be able to type something, hit a (configurable) shortcut key, for example Ctrl-E, and expand the abbreviation we typed. Right now ZenCoding requires displaying the beschissen (sh*tty) and huge tabs. Nein! No need for tabs! I want to use my Tastatur! (keyboard, ja?)

This is what Auto-Replace is for (keyboard-based, no tabs). You can add your own zen-coding here: Options (F8) > Editor > Auto-Replace

7. During installation allow adding TopStyle as an entry in the right-click menu, so that a file can be opened with TopStyle right from the Windows file manager. That would be so frisch, nützlich and gemutlich!

Interesting thought. I'll add this to my list of things to do. In the meantime, you can add TopStyle to the "Send To" menu. Instructions on how to do this are here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows- ... d-to-menu/

8. When an update of TopStyle is published, provide a list of what changed. You are a hard-working man. We want to know what to thank you and congratulate you for!

When TopStyle prompts you for an update, there's a button labelled "More". When you click this button, an overview of changes appears.

In zusammengefasster (summary, ja?) I have to say that I like TopStyle very much, but there are some features that you need to add so that Sie können aufholen (you can do the catch-up) with editors that use Scintilla. You must catch-up Stefan, and I don't mean the tomato-paste that kulturlosen ungehobelt Americans put on their "Hott Dogg" - I mean in the Technologie und Kultiviertheit way. You know - Eleganz und Macht!! Ja? Ja! Ja!!!

You're right. TopStyle 5 is in the making, and it is going to catch-up with some of the latest technologies. In the meantime, I would like to thank you for this post of yours. It proves the Germans *do* have a good sense of humor

[vonglockenspiel]

Friday, April 22, 2011

First off, many thank you's and much appreciation and gratitude for your quick and serious answer. I have sent a Telex to Bavaria telling everyone in the village of my birth that indeed all is well. Stefan, I wrote, is a champion!

Also, again important to mention: thank you for your work on TopStyle. It's easy to ask for new features and enhancements to existing features, but it's **A LOT** of work to get it done. Thank you for your hard work.

Now, having read your comments twice, allow me to make a few polite clarifications of my own, following your comments. Please note that I'm using the original item numbers in my comments.

1. The error appears when opening Python and Perl files. It used to happen when opening XML, XSLT, and JavaScript, but no more, maybe because "don't show this error again" was clicked or maybe you improved something. Question 1: is there a legit way to not get this, like "mapping" Python or Perl under |Options |Preview |Mappings? Question 2: disabling the error, is it per extension or all extensions, or a third option?

Please also note that the idea is not necessarily to "preview" these files, just to edit them. Also it would be nice if the files would get color-coded.

2. Disabling the dashes and enabling color does make usability much better; excellent enhancement!! However, here is a question: is there a way to have 1 pixel thin lines instead of dashes? That way the user can leave the lines and have no need for colors. The comprehensive enhancement that is required here is two-fold: [a] allow setting the type of line: none, solid, dotted, dashes. [b] allow setting the color of the lines.

3. I failed to clarify myself when speaking of Indent Guides. My apology. Indent guides does not refer to showing tabs. Indent guides are thin vertical lines that connect the first and last line of a canonical block of code (if/then/else, functions, etc). If you choose to implement this feature, please allow users to set the color of these lines, and preferably also the type of line (dotted, solid, none, etc) Please see Notepad++, Notepad2, SciTE, Programmers Notepad, etc for an implementation of the feature.

4. You elegantly disregarded this suggestion. Aha! How clever! However, I was able to set the shape of my cursor, and its blinking on my Minix terminal connected to a VAX in 1984! The Scintilla library contains the code to do this. For reference, when you have the time or the desire, you may want to look at: http://www.scintilla.org/

5. I think I understand your comment but I'm not totally sure that I do. Allow me to explain myself a bit better: ZenCoding is a library. I believe it has a JavaScript and a Python version. (If I win the lottery I will convert it to Lua.) If the editor can handle either language, you just plug it in. Am I to understand your suggestion to be "key in the abbreviations manually"? That would not be very effective. People want to use ZenCoding as is, as in: get latest version, plop it in, bind it, set a keyboard shortcut to expand abbreviations, and done. ZenCoding is at: http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/

6. This item you also swept under the carpet. Fine. TopStyle users shall replace their F4 key with a titanium one! But please know that better behaved (dynamic) panels would be appreciated. (I'm assuming the library you use does not allow the dynamic hiding/display of panels.)

7. Thank you for accepting my idea and for the link. I know of SendTo, but to the user that is more steps: r_click, send_to, top_style instead of r_click, top_style.

8. Apologies for not noticing that. Thank you!

Now, a few additional issues:

9. TopStyle does not mention Safari 5, Opera 10, IE9, Maxthon, or Gugel Khram. Any specific reason? Is that a matter of just adding them or is there additional work to do in terms of underlying additions?
By the way, IE10 and CSS3 - that stuff is tied to HTML5 and a work in progress. You may want to keep an eye on it but it's in a huge mess right now.

10. The tab bar: the part with the icons can be less tall. You can easily shave off 4 pixels from both the top and the bottom, making it tighter, less bulky and leave more room for editing on the screen.

11. The ZenCoding thing brings me to a new item/question: does TopStyle support macros? I don't think so. If I'm wrong, I apologize. Would you consider embedding the JavaScript or Lua engines in TopStyle so that users could write macros? (Python also has an engine but it is in an antiquated version of Python.) Would that be a large project requiring a huge amount of work? I think that it is, but I might be wrong.
Lua is at: http://www.lua.org/
JavaScript is at: http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/ [maybe this project has been replaced with a newer one.]

That's about it so far.

Thank you again for your work on TopStyle, and much much gratitude for answering my email with such speed and detail. I hope that my current email proves to be valuable in clarifying my suggestions and making a good case for implementing them some time in the near future. I am very aware that as a software developer you have your own priorities, and that you manage your priorities to the best of your knowledge and as circumstances allow. As such, I hope you keep my suggestions and comments on one of your shelves, and you look at them from time to time and get to implement those items that make sense.

Thank you and best regards.

Gustaf Von Glockenspiel
Live to appreciate beer, women and software, and always but always - Bavaria Uber Alles!

[TopStyle Support]

I have sent a Telex to Bavaria telling everyone in the village of my birth that indeed all is well.

Two years ago, I visited Bavaria and I was loving this. This truly is one of the most beautiful places in Europe.

1. The error appears when opening Python and Perl files. Please also note that the idea is not necessarily to "preview" these files, just to edit them.

Because the error msgs are actually coming from Internet Explorer, you can always close the Preview Panel, or switch to some other rendering engine (Mozilla Gecko or Apple WebKit). Then these error msgs should disappear. "Server Mappings" are the way to go, because Internet Explorer in the Preview Panel is simply doing the same thing as what would happen if you would open your document in Internet Explorer itself.

2. Disabling the dashes and enabling color does make usability much better; excellent enhancement!! However, here is a question: is there a way to have 1 pixel thin lines instead of dashes? That way the user can leave the lines and have no need for colors. The comprehensive enhancement that is required here is two-fold: [a] allow setting the type of line: none, solid, dotted, dashes. [b] allow setting the color of the lines.

Are you saying your request is for a thin line instead of dashes? That should be a simple thing to do at my end.

3. I failed to clarify myself when speaking of Indent Guides. My apology. Indent guides does not refer to showing tabs. Indent guides are thin vertical lines that connect the first and last line of a canonical block of code (if/then/else, functions, etc). If you choose to implement this feature, please allow users to set the color of these lines, and preferably also the type of line (dotted, solid, none, etc) Please see Notepad++, Notepad2, SciTE, Programmers Notepad, etc for an implementation of the feature.

I'll consider this for TopStyle 5. Please note TopStyle 4 does support code collapsing (if/then/else, functions, etc) and this existing feature is pretty close to what you're describing here.

4. You elegantly disregarded this suggestion. Aha! How clever! However, I was able to set the shape of my cursor, and its blinking on my Minix terminal connected to a VAX in 1984! The Scintilla library contains the code to do this. For reference, when you have the time or the desire, you may want to look at: http://www.scintilla.org/

I'll consider this for TopStyle 5.

5. I think I understand your comment but I'm not totally sure that I do. Allow me to explain myself a bit better: ZenCoding is a library. I believe it has a JavaScript and a Python version. (If I win the lottery I will convert it to Lua.) If the editor can handle either language, you just plug it in. Am I to understand your suggestion to be "key in the abbreviations manually"? That would not be very effective. People want to use ZenCoding as is, as in: get latest version, plop it in, bind it, set a keyboard shortcut to expand abbreviations, and done. ZenCoding is at: http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/

TopStyle's Auto-Replace supports everything you need for ZenCoding. For TopStyle 5, I'll make sure to include something out-of-the-box.

6. This item you also swept under the carpet. Fine. TopStyle users shall replace their F4 key with a titanium one! But please know that better behaved (dynamic) panels would be appreciated. (I'm assuming the library you use does not allow the dynamic hiding/display of panels.)

I'm going to be honest here. I did consider overhauling the UI for TopStyle 5, including a new Ribbon. However, I believe the current UI works for most users, and I'd rather spend my time on actual new features.

9. TopStyle does not mention Safari 5, Opera 10, IE9, Maxthon, or Gugel Khram. Any specific reason? Is that a matter of just adding them or is there additional work to do in terms of underlying additions?

TopStyle 5 is going to support all the latest browsers, including Safari 5 and Firefox 4 and IE9.

11. The ZenCoding thing brings me to a new item/question: does TopStyle support macros? I don't think so. If I'm wrong, I apologize. Would you consider embedding the JavaScript or Lua engines in TopStyle so that users could write macros? (Python also has an engine but it is in an antiquated version of Python.) Would that be a large project requiring a huge amount of work? I think that it is, but I might be wrong.

TopStyle's HTML toolbar is fully customizable, and JavaScript-based. It can automate a lot of tasks.

Live to appreciate beer, women and software

In this particular order?

[vonglockenspiel]

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Dear Stefan,

This email will be as short as possible. Being an old man with few years to live (give or take I have only 70 more years left) I know that time is precious, and I also know that you have better things to do than to read my detailed TopStyle suggestions.

1. Thank you for your latest reply. As usual, very patient, detailed, and professional. You are indeed an Uber-mensch!

2. I am glad you visited Bavaria! Bavaria is to me the most beautiful place on earth. Sometimes I drink beer and play the trumpet wearing just a dark green Tyrol hat with the troika of black, red and bright gold feathers in it, to remind myself of the glory days of my youth. I don't wear any lederhosen, because you see, at my age I chafe easily.

Now, to TopStyle:

3. Regarding the errors that are displayed when opening some types of files - here is the issue as I see it: it seems like TopStyle actively discourages people from opening files other than those that are "allowed", even though these are just text files. Perhaps I could suggest this: internally to TopStyle, split files into two categories: "allowed" files (HTML, CSS, etc) and "other", those that are not what you expect to be editing. The "other" you should treat as text, and preferably try to match to it a chroma-coding lexer based on the extension. There is no reason for a person editing an HTML or CSS or PHP file, *not* to be able to open a *.txt or *.sql file. These files, since they are "other" should *not* be interpreted, previewed, etc, they should just be loaded for editing as any flat text file. And if you can match a lexer and have the text color-coded for SQL or whatever the extension is, then all is good. But TopStyle should not discourage editing these "other" files. I understand that TopStyle is (mostly) a CSS/HTML editor, but in Web programming there is a lot besides HTML and CSS. It seems strange to close the door to sql and text (and other) files when they are just so common, and after all is said and done, these are just text files.

I hope I'm making sense: you can treat CSS/HTML etc as your preferred files, and provide for them extra features, but it seems limiting to block other types of text files. With your not-preferred files just load them, see if you can color-code them, and carry on.


4. Apologies for not expressing well-deserved gratitude for adding the feature where users can set the color the current line of code: thank you for this enhancement! Now to clarify, yes, please allow setting the type of the lines, so that instead of dashes users can use solid, dotted, dashed or no lines, and if possible allow setting the color of these lines.

Please don't get confused by my seemingly shape-shifting use of the word "lines": in context #1 it refers to the current line of source code, in context #2 it refers to the current line indicator, in context #3 it refers to the line above and below the current line indicator. Perhaps we should refer to this as "the border type of the current line indicator bar".


5. Stefan, once you use an editor that does true Indent Guides (the vertical lines that I described) you will never go back. This is particularly very useful when you have to edit somebody else's code and you need to make sense of the code. Indent Guides are a life saver, and also make it easy to spot bugs related to improperly closed blocks of code and other problems. It is also an invaluable feature when organizing a poorly formatted source code file.


6. I believe that my explanation of ZenCoding was very shallow. Assuming that you used ZenCoding, I failed to mention that ZenCoding is not just an abbreviation expander, it also supports a very straightforward syntax to chain abbreviations. As such:

div#page>div.logo+ul#navigation>li*5>a

will expand to

<div id="page">
<div class="logo"></div>
<ul id="navigation">
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
</ul>
</div>

ZenCoding is a brilliant library and for people who do a lot of HTML/CSS (TopStyle's area of expertise) ZenCoding can save much typing, once you become an expert in its notation. I agree that the TopStyle abbreviation expander is nice, but it's no ZenCoding. No offense intended.

Please also note that the ZenCoding site has a TopStyle piece, but the installation is somewhat messy, and in order to expand abbreviations, we need to select the abbreviation first, and the tab bar needs to be on display too. In editors where ZenCoding is smoothly integrated all you need to do is type the abbreviation or the abbreviation sequence and hit a pre-set key, and pop! it expands.

For TopStyle specific reference:
> App files:
http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/dow ... ng.1.2.zip
> How-to:
http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/wik ... enCodingEn


7. You are OK with the panels not being self-hiding. What can I say, I understand your priorities. However please know that Eclipse, Visual Studio, NetBeans etc all have support for self-hiding panels. Yes, I also know they have tons of money and developers, so it's easy for them to do stuff like that. As the Americanische say "I get it". However, I hope one day, when you win the lottery, you may implement that. Bottom line: I understand and respect your decisions and your need to set priorities.


8. Thank you for planning to support the new browsers. That's not fun, with the constant upgrades in browsers and all, but important. Thank you for your hard work.


9. So TopStyle can run JavaScripts? That is actually very good (and surprising) news! So surprising in fact, it's confusing. So we can write macros then? This needs investigation. Where is my spyglass? And where is my butterfly net? Helga! Helga! Where is Helga, my zaftig assistant?


10. Yes Stefan. Beer first. A good beer never breaks your heart, and doesn't mind if you play the trumpet wearing only a bright sea-green Tyrol hat with white and sky-blue feathers in it, to celebrate the traditions, the history and the flag of Bavaria.


11. A new feature request - please allow me to explain the need first:
- Often times CSS files grow because we add more and more rules, using classes, id's and by overloading standard HTML tags. At a certain point it becomes a mess. What would be nice is to be able to sort these rules by the rule name, so that overloaded html tags come first, classes which start with a "." come second, and then id's which start with "#" come third, each in alphabetical order. However in order to do that we need to compress each rule to a single line, then sort the lines and then "reopen" the rules.
- I don't think that TopStyle can sort lines, unless there is some secret way to do that.
- So now, the feature definition, in two steps: [a] allow sorting of text blocks, [b] allow sorting of css rules, by category and then alphabetically within each category.


I think this is the last of my comment emails for the time being. In all sincerity, I must tell you that creating and supporting a programmer's editor is extremely hard. Programmers have a lot of requirements and their needs constantly evolve, as technology advances. One also has to admit that the Scintilla library has raised the bar. Add to that a product like Eclipse, which albeit monolithic, has an impressive array of customizable editing features, and you can see that you've got your work cut out for you.

Nevertheless, I'm sure TopStyle 5 will be something we should look forward to.

Thank you most kindly for taking the time to read my detailed comments. Old people, we are long-winded. You have my gratitude.

I wish you much strength, wisdom, happiness and success in your work and life.

Best Regards,

Gustaf Von Glockenspiel
Immer und Immer - Bavaria Uber Alles!

[TopStyle Support]

Regarding #11: Style Sweeper should allow you to do all that (sort selectors, etc)

[denyerec]

I signed up to respond to this, as it was the only hit on Google for Topstyle5 and ZenCoding! I believe Vonglockenspiel did an admirable job of explaining the concept, and how it is superior to auto-replace when it comes to HTML authoring, so no need to labour that one.

I own a TS 4.0 license and was looking excitedly at the TopStyle 5 features as, by and large, it looks amazing. However, the lack of ZenCoding support is an absolute killer and is, in fact, why I stopped using TopStyle in favour of Notepad++.

That's right, you heard me; I was happy to ditch *every single feature* of TopStyle to gain access to ZenCoding, which is the fastest and most elegant way I've ever seen of creating large HTML documents. Dialogs, code expansion, all those things are painfully slow in comparison. I know it may seem like a minor issue but to anyone who's ever used ZC, there's no going back.

What I have done in the past is create the larger HTML framework of a site in NP++ with ZC, then when the bulk of it is there I'll load it into TopStyle for CSS and work from there, however it would be fantastic to see the ZenCoding library incorporated into TopStyle so it could become a one-stop-shop.

[TopStyle Support]

Auto-Replace in TopStyle 5 has been re-written with ZenCoding in mind. All the default auto-replace templates included with TopStyle 5 are "borrowed" from ZenCoding.