Re: [gedit-list] after 1 month of use -- gedit feedback / issues

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

Il giorno lun, 02/07/2007 alle 09.57 +0530, Ritesh Khadgaray ha scritto:
> Hello
> 
> On Mon, 2007-07-02 at 04:57 +0100, Andre Pinheiro wrote:
> > Hi list,
> > 
> > Ok, I've been using gedit (v2.18.1) for almost 1 month now, and here are 
> > the issues I'm having --
> > 
> > (I apologize in advance for the "draft-like" text of this email -- time 
> > has been short..)
> > 
> > 
> > * Features I'm missing in gedit:
> > 
> > - Configurable chars to be part of word -- like in gnome-terminal's 
> > option: "Select-by-word characters"
> 
> This  reminds me - Vertical selection as seen in gnome-terminal.
> 

Both of these require hacking at the gtk level, if anyone wants to
tackle them (especially the second) it would be awesome, but they are
far from trivial. Maybe the configurable word boundaries could be done
in gedit without touching gtk, but it would probably require overriding
and reimplementing all of GtkTextView selection handling.
gnome-terminal uses the VTE widget which is completely different from
GtkTextView, so even if the code could be looked at to get ideas from
it, it's not a simple matter of cut&pasting.

> > 
> > - Smart Home?
> > I.e., <Home> putting the cursor after indentation (instead of at col 1)
> > 

This one is there already! press Home and you'll go to the beginning of
the line, press Home twice and you'll get to the beginning of the text
after the indentation. It's very comfortable once you know it.
In gedit 2.19/20 it will be able to easily change it to go the beginning
of the text first, since it will be just a matter of setting a property
of GtkSourceView 2.

> > - Z-order Tab Switching with Ctrl-Tab (or other hotkey)
> > explanation - from a quick googling:
> > "Z-order buffer switching allows you to easily switch to previous buffer 
> > using Ctrl-Tab, with exact behavior you expect from Alt-Tab."
> > as seen in:
> > Firefox, jEdit, and a good deal of editors..
> 
> This issue was discussed earlier, and the conclusion - Ctrl+Alt+
> PgUp/PgDn seems to universal across all gnome apps.
> 

This is really something I'd prefer discussed and decided at the GNOME
level and agreed by the HIG people:
 - Ctrl+Alt+PgUp/PgDn is the specified way to go to the prev/next tab
(and in fact it is done by gtknotebook, not by gedit)
 - gedit has Alt+1,2,3,4... to jump directly to the 1st, 2nd, 3d etc tab
I would not mind having also a way to go to the last used tab, but
choosing the right key combination is a pain (Ctrl+Tab is not an option,
it is needed for Accessibility).

> 
> > 
> > - Smarter Indentation for Ruby / Rails
> > e.g.: <Enter> in a line that starts with "class " should increase 
> > indentation for next line. same with "def ".
> > 
> > 

Language specific indentation is something that comes up often... we
would even like to put generic support for it in gtksourceview.
Basically the current status is "help would be very appreciated"

> > -- Is there some way to get any of these?
> > Some configuration? Plugin? Or "patches welcome"? ;)  (I intend to 
> > contribute in the future..)
> > 

Great! Patches are *always* welcome :)

> > 
> > * Some problems / questions:
> > 
> > (BTW, I've installed the additional lang and MIME types for Rails 
> > available here (page in spanish):
> > http://blog.nationcode.com/articles/2007/05/29/emular-textmate-en-linux
> > )
> > 
> > - Why sometimes gedit doesn't:
> > recognize when I open an .rhtml file and set up proper syntax 
> > highlighting for it?
> > 

Well, mime type is not detected by gedit itself, but by gnome-vfs...
does nautilus detect the mime type properly for those files?

> > - When does gedit save the last position of the caret in a file?
> > Bug: A lot of times gedit doesn't save the last position of the caret in 
> > a file.
> > 

It saves it each time a document is closed. Are you sure that sometimes
it is not saved? I notice however that sometimes is saved, but when you
open the file the caret is placed at the proper place but the view is
not scrolled to the caret. Help in investigating this issue is
appreciated.

> > - gedit displays one less newline at end of file?
> > -- one less newline at end of file than other editors?
> > 
> > 

Heh, funny. Before 2.18 people complained about the extra new line
displayed at the end of the file and we fixed that :)

ciao
	Paolo