Having worked with PHPed for a few months now, I'm missing the smart code templates from ZS and it would be great if there were something like that in PHPed.

Basically I'm missing the ability to...

specify variables in the templates that can be reused elsewhere in the template (filling in the first instance fills in all of the rest)
specify variables that insert data from the current coding environment (like the date, time, file name, current method name, current class name)

And then when using a template...

have the variable name displayed in the code as a hint to what the information variable should contain
have the cursor jump to the next variable when I press tab or enter
be able to specify the end point for the cursor after the template variables

I don't miss these features a lot when I use templates in the code, but I miss them a _lot_ in doc blocks.

This would be great. I've written a macro for this in MSVC, but I'm missing the feature in PHPEd, which is a pity, as the templates are otherwise working very, very smoothly in PHPEd.

I'd recommend supporting a macro system with both functions and variables, such as in this file header template. Also, using dollar signs for macros would be a bad idea, as they occur so often in PHP and Perl code. Using the wiki-style double square brackets would probably be a safer bet.:

Even though the functions would be nice, just supporting simple variables, like "[[user]]" would be very useful; this would also be extendable at a later stage.

(Supporting some standard embeddable language within the brackets would of course be a great benefit, but I'd recommend putting that in as part of a more general macro/plugin feature.)

Additionally it would be very nice to be able to sort the code templates. At the moment they appear in the order of creation iirc. At least sorting alphabetically would help finding your code templates quicker while writing code, especially when you organize them by "groupname - templatename".

Btw: in the template editor dialog, the templates are ordered alphabetically!

Another nice feature would be an extended template code editor. The existing one doesn't allow tabs and is pretty small. syntax highlighting would be quiet nice too, but not that essential

Just an idea: writing templates could be embedded inside the standard editor by using a toolbar or an adjusted new/load/save.

Thanks for such a nice product and the best support I have ever noticed!

Yours,
mat