Script Management/Editor Feature Requests

I just thought of a couple of things that might be handy as far as script management. My apologies if this has been mentioned before.

First, a duplicate button. I have a sort of “template” script for my functions, widgets, and scripts. It would be handy to select it and either click the duplicate button or hit cmd-D.

Second, a floating Suite Window that a user could keep off to the side that lists all the suites I have available in a tree control format. If you have scripts in mulitple locations, you could perhaps have a sort of bookmark feature that you could easily browse suites in different locations.

Third, I’d like it if the Script Editing Window behaved more like my text editor (I use Crimson Editor on Win) in a couple of ways:

a)Allow multiple scripts to be open in tabs in the same window in addition to the current behavior (ala Safari)

b)Selecting a block of text and hitting the tab key indents it as opposed to overwriting with a TAB character

c)If I force an indent, my text editor remembers where I actually started typing and hitting return automagically inserts the correct number of TAB stops. I’d like it if Eggplant could do that.

Thanks again for listening,

Allen

Those are good ideas, which we will keep in mind for future releases (the next release is due out very soon, so its features are set, but perhaps in a later release).

Your items (b) and © related to indenting are currently addressed (slightly differently) by the automatic script indenting feature in Eggplant’s editor. Perhaps you have the automatic indenting turned off? If the automatic indenting is unsatisfactory in some way, we would be interested in hearing ways that it might be improved.

Regards,

Doug

I have automatic indenting turned on, and it works fine for the various kinds of loops that you can do. What I’d like to be able to do is be able to override the auto indenting once in a while, mostly for purely formatting reasons. For example, I make use of “inline” comments using “–” a lot. If the comment is going to wrap around onto the next line or two, I personally want it off to the side, with the rest of the comment. My text editor simply allows me to select all of those lines hit TAB a couple of times and they are lined up the way that I want.

I have a follow-up request, while I’m at it. I’m missing the ability to show line numbers, and the ability to click to the left of an line to select all of it.

Thanks again for listening,

Allen

I make use of “inline” comments using “–” a lot. If the comment is going to wrap around onto the next line or two, I personally want it off to the side, with the rest of the comment.

Got it. We will consider adding new indenting capabilities to satisfy this need in the future. In the meantime, here is a poor substitute that may at least give you something close to what you want. You can set an additional amount to indent continuation lines (by default it is set to two tabs), and SenseTalk allows a comment after the continuation character (), so you can do something like this:

put 77 into foobar \-- set the default initial value
		\-- of the foobar multiplier to an appropriate
		-- level for controlling the zingbat queue

It’s not ideal, and there seems to be a small bug with colorizing these comments, but perhaps this will be some help.

I have a follow-up request, while I’m at it. I’m missing the ability to show line numbers, and the ability to click to the left of an line to select all of it.

I’m curious why you want to see line numbers in scripts, since there is nothing in Eggplant that inherently refers to or makes use of line numbers. Can you explain why this would be useful?

You can select any line in a script by triple-clicking it. Triple-click-and-drag to select multiple lines, or triple-click the first line and then shift-click the last one in a range.

I hope this helps.

Doug

[quote=“SenseTalkDoug”]
Got it. We will consider adding new indenting capabilities to satisfy this need in the future. In the meantime, here is a poor substitute that may at least give you something close to what you want. You can set an additional amount to indent continuation lines (by default it is set to two tabs), and SenseTalk allows a comment after the continuation character (), so you can do something like this:

put 77 into foobar \-- set the default initial value
		\-- of the foobar multiplier to an appropriate
		-- level for controlling the zingbat queue

It’s not ideal, and there seems to be a small bug with colorizing these comments, but perhaps this will be some help.[/quote]
Got it. Thanks!

I’m curious why you want to see line numbers in scripts, since there is nothing in Eggplant that inherently refers to or makes use of line numbers. Can you explain why this would be useful?

You can select any line in a script by triple-clicking it. Triple-click-and-drag to select multiple lines, or triple-click the first line and then shift-click the last one in a range.

It’s mostly so that I can click to the left of a line to select it. The app that I test (and other apps such as word) use this selection method, and I’ve kinda gotten used to it. I’ll remember triple-click.

While Eggplant doesn’t necessarily use it, it is kind of nice when my script gets long to reference a line number when I’m documenting changes at check-in to source control. To be able to say “I changed the if/then loop that starts at line 500 to pass myVar into function foobar” I think would be handy. Don’t know about anyone else of course :slight_smile:

Thanks for your help,

Allen