Hi,

Here's the latest selection of bugs and suggestions I have from using phpEd (still the best ide/debugger I've ever used IMHO), some of which I have asked for before, but don't seem to have been included yet. Maybe some of you might like to comment on them, but it would be great to see them included in a future build (hopefully soon? ).

Bugs
----

- when hovering over a variable in debugging mode and the variable has an & in it, the & doesn't show, however it does show in the locals window.

- when hovering over $HTTP_POST_FILES[$strFilename]["name"], the tooltip shows it as undefined, but it shows up correctly in the locals window.

- if phpEd is associated with the .php extension and a file is double-clicked, phpEd doesn't open the last workspace when this setting is on. It works OK when phpEd is opened normally, though.

- the colour changer in the syntax colouring settings tab only seems to remember the colours in the immediate drop down colour picker. If you click Other, any colour you pick is forgotten and the last colour in the colour picker is the one that is stored.

- the editor saves mouse and key presses and highlight and copy actions as undoable actions even when there hasn't been any real action. This is very annoying when trying to undo the real actions. Please stop it doing this.

- undone text should be left highlighted like most editors do.

- both the tooltips when you hover over a variable and the locals tab show superfluous backslashes (\) whenever there is a slash in the value e.g. a windows filename would be displayed as "c:\\path\\to\\file\\filename.txt". This makes the value really difficult to read.

- when you close an editor window, phpEd positions on the window to the right of the one just closed. It used to position on the last viewed window, which is much more useful.

- phpEd now opens a new editor window to the right of the active window. This is useful, but sometimes you need the old way of the new window being opened at the end of the tabs. There needs to be a setting to switch this new action off.

- composite field names e.g. ${"prefix$strField"} aren't syntax highlighted i.e. the "prefix$strField" doesn't have the $strField bit highlighted as an in-string field name.

- When you press Ctrl+Home, then do a find for a php word, phpEd still stays in HTML mode - I would have thought it should switch to php mode.

- Instead of having to put a file mask in the File In Files dialog box to specify which files to search, a much easier way would be the other way round i.e. you should only have to put in the types that shouldn't be searched. This would make the mask list a lot smaller.

Suggestions
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- if you are in debugging mode and you change some code and save the file, it would be good if the new code is immediately available to be tested. At the moment, you need to stop and re-start the debugging session to register the change.

- when selecting a variable name, it would be useful to have a setting to control whether the leading $ is selected as well.

- at the moment, you can either select whole words or individual characters. It would be good to be able to select whole words only when you double-click on the first word (like Word does), i.e. if you double-click to select a word then keep dragging the cursor, whole words continue to be selected rather than individual characters, but if you just drag the cursor, only single characters are selected. Perhaps, instead of having a setting to switch the selection mode, it could be intrinsic.

- if a line wraps to the following line in the editor window, selecting it only selects part of it (i.e. one physical line at a time). It would be better to have the whole logical line selected rather than just a physical line.

- it would be nice to be able to see the values of constants too. The only way to see them at the moment is to open the code explorer, which doesn't show the value unless you hover over a name. It would be far more useful to have constants in a separate tab like the locals tab that shows both the constant name and value in separate columns. It would also be really useful to be able to see a constant's value in a tooltip when you hover over the name in the code window in debug mode.

- it would be good to be able to highlight whole lines using one click in the left margin, when the gutter is off (having to click and drag to highlight a line is a real pain). The cursor should also change to point to the right when the mouse is over the margin - a visual sign that you are in the right place to highlight a line is really useful.

- it would be good to be able to select logical lines instead of/as well as selecting physical lines e.g. if a code line spans 3 lines, if you select the first line, all 3 physical lines should be selected, not just the first one.

- it would be good to have a stand alone colour selector (like in the body tag generator dialog) so we can select some text or just position the cursor in a css file and it is replaced with the hex code of the selected colour.

- if word wrap is on, there shouldn't really be an horizontally scrollbar should there?

- it would be interesting to have a project statistics tab on the project properties dialog that shows stuff like how many files and lines of code are in the project, maybe split by file type.

I don't have the IDE in front of me at the moment, but IIRC, you need to click an Add to List button, or something like that. This adds the custom color to the bottom section of the color palette, enabling you to select it when you return to the main settings window.



Yes, very annoying, indeed, and I've been trying to convince NuSphere to change this behavior. Please see this thread for more:

undo-redo-t3807.html

I encourage you and everyone else to contribute, so that they know it's more than just a user or two who doesn't like the current behavior.



Again, see the thread above, and the thread I linked to therein.



I'd love to see the whole find/replace interface and underlying feature set overhauled. See these threads:

search-replace-needs-extreme-makeover-new-ftp-file-t3643.html
search-and-replace-t3483.html
clean-up-search-in-files-interface-t2643.html



This would indeed be very nice. I suspect it's a limitation in the way the PHP engine and DBG interact, and so may not be easily fixable.



I can see this being controlled by a modifier. Pressed during the selection and it acts one way, while not pressed, it acts another. A setting would control the default.



I just suggested this a few days ago here:

double-click-and-drag-word-selection-t3840.html

But it got no feedback. If you also like this, please post in that thread.

As for the rest of your suggestions, I like every last one of them .

Please make sure you updated to the most recent version, which is 5.0.1/5029 at the moment. There is no problem like one you decribed.

I tried and it worked for me. Could you please provide a sample that will replicate the problem?


It's a know and expected behaviour. If you need last workspace to be loaded, please add -w command line argument.


Thanks for the report.


It's more of the editor architecture issue, and can't be solved easily.
Although, we'll look what we can do with it in the future version.


What are they?
I did not see any editors that leave undone text selected.


There is no problem with slashes. It's just the way the strings are represented in PHP format. If you don't like it, turn it off in the Locals' or Globals' Window popup menu.


"last viewed stack" is supported by Windows MDI interface which is not the case with PhpED, where all the editors are on the tabs, not on the MDI windows.



in case of ${"prefix$strField"}, whole the name is highlighted as a single variable which is correct.


I'm not sure what you mean.



I don't think it will solve the problem completely. Some other people definitely have more file extensions with binary content (gif, wav, wmv, png, tar, gz, zip, png, fla, etc)

Well - Word, Windows Editor (Notepad), WordPad, EditPad Pro, TopStyle Pro, NoteTab, Dreamweaver, HomeSite, VS.Php (based on Visual Studio) and so on, even mail clients like for example Thunderbird - it's Windows standard. I admit that concerning this, Zend Studio and Komodo act like PhpED, but why not make it better than the competitors?

Cheers,
Jan

Hi,

I would really like to upgrade to your new version, but first I would like ask how many of my bugs and suggestions have been incorporated into your latest version (I have version 5.0.1 build 5028 now), as I'd rather not pay $108 if the functionality/usability is the same as the one I have now.

Could you let me know whether any of my points have been addressed yet, please, especially the suggestion of being able to select whole lines with one click in the left margin. I've been waiting for this one for a long time, I think it's about 3 years now.

Thank you.

Debbie

Dear Debbie,

Almost all your points have already been addressed. Please see my comments I posted on 03 Sep 2007 12:05 pm.
Since that time we've released 5.2 and it's where handler for Undo/Redo is re-implemented from scratches. In partucular it closes the issue with UNDO you asked about. In this version we also implemented MDI-style editor switching.

Hi dmitri,

Thank you letting me know and for addressing my issues. Could you tell me whether the line selecting issue has been addressed, because that's the one big bug bear I have about the editor at the moment.

If that's been addressed, I'll jump at this release. If not, I'll jump at the first release that does address it.

Debbie

Debbie-Leigh, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the latest update is an update, not an upgrade, so you shouldnt have to pay anything to update your version to the most current.



+1 for this feature!!! That is one I would gladly PAY to have added.



+1 for this as well. I asked about it some time ago, and while there is a "work-around" (adding 'get_defined_constants() to the immediate window), it isnt nearly as friendly as just having a list of user defined constants instead of EVERY constant.

Hi gilzow,

Thank you for your comments.

Unfortunately, their shopping cart is telling me I have to pay the $108 for 5.2. I guess it's because I'm changing from a 5.0 release to a 5.2 one.

Debbie

I think maybe you are going to the wrong place to get the update. I purchased an upgrade from v4 to v5 (not 5.2) and I was not charged for the update to 5.2. On nusphere's very front page, in the upper left-hand corner, click on the Member Login button. Log in to your account. Now, in the upper left hand corner, click on the link titled My Products. The resulting page should list all of your purchased products with a link to download the updated version.

In fact, I see that I'm a version or two behind (b5218 vs b5223) and need to download another update.

If you instead go to the "Purchase" link, the online store will think you want to purchase ANOTHER copy of the application.

Hope this helps!

Whether you are or aren't charged for the upgrade depends on how long ago you payed for the version you have I think.
Anyway, for this kind of thing it is best that you contact NuSphere sales and ask, that way you are sure beyond any doubt. No regrets afterwards

Exactly.
We provide graceful period. When we release a new version, we provide it for free to all customers who recently purchased a previous one or an upgrade to it.