Better Script Editor

If this has been said a hundred times already, just let me have it with the 'do a search already, heres the search link' stuff.

By the way, if this double posts, I clicked submit and it said I wasn't logged in, and I lost the entire message. So this is the second time around typing this. Hopefully I sound less cynical, I love SL.

Bottomline:
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The script editor needs some work.


Suggested Enhancements:
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1. The script editor doesn't respond to the (*,/,-,+) operators on my numberpad. I have to shift-number to get them. This is a drag.

2. Change the cursor to a box to indicate 'insert mode'. This brings me to my next point.

3. Shift-Ins, Ctrl-Ins to copy/paste as well as the Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. All to many times I hit shift-ins to paste, it doesn't paste, the editor goes into insert mode without making me aware of it (see #2), and then I hit Ctrl-V to paste, overwriting a line of code or so.

4. Hilight and drag text to move. (Maybe it does do this I just though of this, it wasn't in my intial message plans.) But if it does not, please this feature would be great.

5. Full Screen Mode. Alt-F11 or whatever, make it fullscreen, set my av to 'busy' automatically (optional) and edit the script full screen.

6. Any sort of intellisense ripoff. When I type 'llListen(' I want to see a tooltip ripoff showing me the arguments of llListen.

7. Dropdown for event handlers. (Like Visual Basic, no comments please, I know ) This way I don't have to go lookup (copy/paste) the 'Listen(whatever param, whatever,,) event handler header each time I forget what the arguments are.)

If the event is already defined in the current state (use the cursor location to determine what state handler your in) jump my cursor to it. If not, put the event handler in the script at the current cursor location.

8. Perference window for the script editor. I want to be able to change the colorizing (i hate comments in orange, i dunno), the font, the font size, the background color, etc..


I had more, but again this is the second time around. Maybe Visual Studio just turned me into an MCSD spoiled brat. And I know this is a 'game'. But if were going to script, let's do it right.


Oh and before I forget:

Now some documentation rants:
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1. Better documentation. And more of it.

2. Documentation in a .chm format. I got the one from the forums (Great work by the way, I'm sorry I forget who created that but it's a lifesaver.) However, this should be straight from LL not because everyone got fed up w/ that *explicit word deleted* html scrap of documentation.

3. Correct the documentation. llGetScale() does not take a key. (anyone? if it actually does I'd love to hear about it )


Thanks for everyones time.
Thats all.

Forgot this one:

No more automatic indenting of the braces. {,} Were all big boys, we know how to properly indent. 75% of the time the auto indent screws it up anyway, especially if you forget one and go back to put it in. bah.

With this auto indent, how about in the 'preferences window' (see original suggestion post) how about an indent amount.
3spaces, 4spaces, a TAB (bah), etc..

Or, just change the tab settings.. I dunno..

Ok, now Im done.
Thanks again for everyone's time.

PLEASE : a search feature.

Many of my scripts are huge, and I have to cut and paste them out into notepad so that I can do a search for all occurances of a variable.

#) Selection expansion. If I have a chunk of selected text, I should be able to shift-click, shift-drag, or shift-double-click to extend it.

#+1) With the cursor in the middle of the top line, up arrow should jump to the beginning of the line. This works in most of the game's other text input fields, but not in the text editor. No reason why it shouldn't. Likewise for the bottom line.

#+2) When I type a TAB, I expect to add a single character to the file. The editor is replacing the TAB with several spaces. This makes arrowing around to adjust the indentations much slower. Please use a proper TAB character.

Um... that's it for now.

auto complete

The one thing from windows I like, would be nice to have that here.

It would be nice if it would auto complete or give the options of each call that starts the same as we tpye a few characters instead of typing it all out.

and this for the new scripters, and old alike:

how about a text color for different stages of the script?

Explanation:

Say as you are typing away, the text is red to denote errors, or un closed states etc...

then each state that is correctly closed etc.. turns a different color, say green or something. Then each state etc.. after that would be a different shade of the first color or a different one entirely.

Would help with those missed brackets and extra brackets b4 saves, not to mention those scripts that save but have fatal errors. Ya know those ones that crash sims cuz of extra or lack of ) or ; or any other characters that might cause trouble.

Not sure I understand this... isn't that how MSVC and word processors work? But I can understand jumping *towards* the beginning of the line (to the end of the new one), if you're going to a line shorter than where the current cursor position is. (Exactly how this forum text editor works in IE..)

And I like the auto indent

Otherwise yea the editor could use a little help...although I'd rather see bug fixes or new script functions.

Remapping of keyboard shortcuts and an expanded preferences menu would help.

How about using an external editor, like notepad, to write scripts? Then cut-n-paste the script into the editor window when you're done.

(Of course, I'm an emacs weenie, so I'll be using that for script editing. And then I can use CVS for versioning control. Ho hum.)

Emacs is the devil

Yes definitely a search would be great. Also maybe a ctrl-g command to goto a line #..

Yeah, I think I would be content at auto-complete and font control. Maybe even being able to choose what colors commands, strings, and variables can be?

I think an external script compiler might be cool.. far in the future...

EDIT: And I would like to be able to toggle auto-indent, as Tiger pointed out. Good for teaching scripting, but it slows me down when I make typos (which is often, trust me).

I just reviewed the replys to my post, and I came up with the top three suggestions: (IMO)

1. Autocomplete. Similiar to intellisense in Visual Studio.
2. Editor preferences. Auto indent, indent amount, colorization options, font control.

/* Edit 10-02-03
3. Fullscreen mode. That little window (even expanded) is way too small for my taste.
*/

3. Actually the find and replace feature would be much better than fullscreen mode. I'm changing my mind here guys.


These are the top three *fixes* as well: (Again, IMO)

1. Numpad /,*,-,+ need to work.
2. Insert mode (hit insert) needs to be indicated via the cursor.
3. Shift-Ins, Ctrl-Ins to copy/paste as well as ctrl-c, ctrl-v.

I don't really have a problem with autoindent slowing me down (rather the reverse) but I definitely could see how it might.

Oh man, please give us an autocomplete. Heck just write out the whole function line including the parameters since you can't omit them anyway.

And numpad * / - + ...

Well there is no key on the numpad but you know what I mean.

Maybe there should be a key on the numpad?

And if auto-complete can't be implemented any time soon, at LEAST put all the parameters into the functions that can be inserted from the pop-up menu. Right now, you can find the function you want in the pop-up menu, but selecting it just adds it to the file. It's ONLY usefulness is to confirm that a function exists, but trying to compile will tell you THAT.

If you pick llListen from the pop-up, it should insert:

llListen( integer channel, string name, key id, string message )

And not just:

llListen()

In the meantime, you can do a mouseover on the code, for example llListen(), and it will pop up a little explanation snippet complete with parameters. Unfortunately this disappears the minute you start typing again.

From my experience, wrt navigating lines, up/down arrows move up/down a line, and home/end move to beginning/end of a line.

I've also never heard of Ctrl-Ins and Shift-Ins being used for copy/paste.

Always curious.

OMG so many auto complete / tooltip tear off / floating hint bar whiners! When I was your age I had to program with vi in one xterm and another xterm for doing mans. And we didnt have any fancy compiler, we had to build makefiles by hand. The makefile took longer than writing the program, but thats the way it was and we liked it!

Hehe but actually ya, I'd love autocomplete myself

lol @ Madox

Ever hear the saying 'they don't make things like they use to.'
My reply is always 'and theres a reason.'

Better development tools = higher productivity. In general

Yeah, I wan't autocomplete bad now. This thread got me thinking about what I'm missing.

Yeah, I developed that habit back in the QuickBasic days, and carried it forward. Luckily Visual Studio supports it.

It makes it easy to copy/paste w/ a single hand if your right handed. I just can't seem to get my left hand to ctrl-c, ctrl-v properly, and I don't wannt use two hands.

Well that sounds more like a personal problem that you're asking for a new feature to patch, hehe. But configurable hotkeys would help everyone.

I think Tiger mentioned that parameters should be included when you "paste" from the drop down... I believe I mentioned basically the same thing...kinda. The only reason I can see not to automagically insert the parameters is that you may want to use something other than the default "message" (for example) and do "msg" instead.

But you are damn lazy if that's the case.

It is a good thing that mouseover shows you the parameters but it's not really much better than tabbing out and copying from the chm or something.

Geez, are we all bein a little too anal?

What about the ability to WindowShade the script windows? I'm always finding myself moving between multiple scripts. If we could double-click on the title bar and have it shrink the window it'd make editing multiple scripts a lot easier. At least let us shrink the window all the way up to the title bar. The current minimum size seems to large for me.

OOOHhhhhh,

One I forgot, that I suggested a looong time ago.....

being able to float windows, ya know remove them to your secong monitor to be able to have more usable space in the client?

Like if your scripting away and someone wants to chat, you wont have to close/move all the script and for that matter any other window(inventory window would really be nice for this), and lose your place as to what the heck you were doing..

In my limited scripting experience I have 2 suggestions.

First, paste dummy arguments when selected functions/events from the dropdown list so we don't have to keep refering to the docs to see what args it takes and in what order.

Second, better documentation!

If they would Base LLScript on Pascal Or VB OR EVEN BASIC
it would be a lot easier to use.

I Have Programmed in 4 Different Languages over the Last 25 Years


1. The speed of ANY Language is the Compiler. Not the source code. (In other words linden programmers Simplicity is best) (If you dont believe me I have 2 Versions of BASIC for the pc written by 2 different companies that run Within 5% of their c or c++ counterparts and both are readily available )


2. Basic , VB TRUEBASIC, and other Dialects of basic are
the MOST WIDELY used and easiest understood Languages in the world .

3.get rid of the darn braces . Ever heard of begin proc end proc or end sub .

Do it right folks

I was gonna write more than this but I wont Just gonna say the syntax of a language really shouldn't matter. Doesn't matter to me anyhow. What the language can do is more important (OO, polymorphic, multi-inheritance, selfmodifying etc)

I'd say Lisp probably has the most hideous syntax but I like it a lot cause programs can easily be self-modifying.

And I never heard of anyone thinking that the speed of an app is based on the language. Its all machine code in the end anyhow.


I should start a Make LL More Like Lisp! movement

Ah ha! I detect a vi user!

Well maybe BASIC is more easily understood, but more people are used to/familiar with the C/C++ style syntax LSL uses.

And used to switch statements. Errm nevermind.



Well I don't *use* vi on a regular basis but I've used both vi and Emacs and.... Emacs is the devil.