while I appreciate the IDE, my preference is to use 3rd party code editors such as VS Code or Sublime Text, not in the least because of split window functionality and a ton of conveniences that don’t exist in the IDE editor (eg clinic on a variable highlights all instances of that variable in the script etc.).
I don’t necessarily need this to directly integrate with Xojo but it would be nice to have a colorizer/formatter/linter/syntax checker - but as far as I can see this does not seem possible.
I do this with LiveCode, and I don’t see why it can’t be done with Xojo?
@Dirk_Cleenwerck thank you, that was the kind of thing I was looking for… inasmuch as it colourises text, but there doesn’t seem to be any auto-formatting or features like code folding, which I do get with other similar-ish platforms like LiveCode (for which there are extensions to do all of the above, even in BBEdit).
By “integration” I was thinking of more reloading class files (text files) live in the IDE after editing externally, rather than than running a command line compiler… but I guess that there is no need or provision for that (?).
Personally I sometimes prefer to view whole code in one go instead of clicking into pockets of code (like multiple methods in a class), but the XOJO code editor doesn’t deal with multiple selections…
(eg click on a variable highlights all instances of that variable in the script etc.).
If I understand what you are saying, this already exists in the current version of the Xojo IDE. Double-click on the name of a variable to “select” it, and the other occurrences in the code will be highlighted.
I like the idea of Arbed but it’s not that useful for my purposes - keeping in mind the point was to view all code in one place, this seems to just reproduce all aspects of the IDE with both properties and code and everything else. This means I have to navigate as much as I would the IDE.
I’m sure offers other features but it’s not helpful for code review…
In addition it raised multiple exceptions (10+) on loading my project file (a web app using DBKit saved in text format), such as:
This has been a very long standing request. Don’t have the Issues # handy but it’s at least 10 years old. Feel free to create a new one though and maybe the powers that be will see the advantage of it. But don’t hold your breath.
The IDE does not recognize changes If you manually edit the project files externally. If you want to force Xojo to reload the changes you made, just select “revert to saved” in the IDE. If it is grayed out, just edit something.
Changes can be made outside of the IDE without corruption but it is unsupported and you do it at your own risk.
It has code folding within a method, but there isn’t a broader view in which you can view multiple methods in the same editor.
Personally I sometimes prefer to view whole code in one go instead of clicking into pockets of code (like multiple methods in a class)
I realize this isn’t what you want, but just in case you don’t know, you can open the same project in multiple windows (New Workspace in the File menu) and thus see multiple methods at the same time. You can also right-click on methods/etc, choose “Open [whatever] in New Tab”, and then drag your tabs out to new windows.
Just as a follow up to my original question - I pretty much get what I was asking for by using VS Code and setting its parser to 'Visual Basic’ (I only wanted it to look nice so I could concentrate all code there before testing in xojo - I personally find the splitting of code into multiple tiny parcels difficult).
Of course the ideal for me would be to be able to do this in xojo directly, i.e. that within it’s current format of splitting the code into tiny parcels it would also give you a view where all events, properties and methods for a class were on a single sheet (the parent object or class) to give better idea of the whole, and editing this would update all the little parcels in the IDE, but I realise that’s not realistic at present. This is the next best thing for my needs…
