OpenEuphoria

1. RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by Mike777b Jul 12, 2016
• 2390 views

Bravo! Very well done, Ryan!

The speed is a little sluggish so I'm a little worried about what the eventual speed will be once you implement additional features, but not too worried.

Just thought I'd let you know what features I feel are required before I could seriously jump on board.

In my world, a GUI is still a UI so it is imperative that the flagship IDE have UI features that invite efficiency, because if the flagship doesn't invite efficiency it is hard to imagine that the IDE will allow a user to create an app that does. For me, that means as much keyboard control as I can get. So, even though Hotkeys are listed in the 0.9.1 - 0.9.9 roadmap already (that is, the soonest stuff), I'd vote for them sooner rather than later. I'd like F5 to run the project's exw, but I can settle for an "Alt-A; R" keyboard shortcut to execute the Run command of the Application Menu. Similarly, FindNext has to have a hotkey (F3?)

The only feature of RedyPad that is absolutely needed is Undo/redo so I'd vote to move that up from Version 1.0 on the roadmap.

I actually think with the above few features it is ready (yuck, yuck) for the real world.

There is also one feature I'd suggest you put into the roadmap somewhere and that is an additional command on the Application menu entitled "Backup and Run" which makes a textfile backup of the exw file which can function as a restore point. I would put a backup directory in the Source directory and create a new file called ProjectName.exw.YYMMDDHHMMSS.bkp# where YYMMDDHHMMSS obviously stands for Year Month Day Hour Minute Second and # is sequential (starts at 00001 and increments by 1 each time). I'd even settle for the poor man's version which would be a command on the Application menu named something like "Execute App and Run" and then put the appname somewhere where it would be remembered. Then it would be up to the user to write a small app that would do the backup before running the exw. Just a (long) thought!

As you can tell I haven't investigated in detail the RedyLib feature-set and I'm sure there are things you plan on doing there, as well.

I understand that these things take time!

Thanks for RedyCode/Lib, it has great promise.

mike

3. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by Mike777b Jul 12, 2016
• 2345 views

Actually, there is. The date stamp allows one to discern statistics related to time (when did I work on it, how much progress did I make that day, that week, etc.). The sequential indicator is much easier to track milestones with. Heck, if you are going to call me out on redundancy we don't need either as the operating system will timestamp the file.

mike

5. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jul 12, 2016
• 2327 views

I respectivefully disagree. euphoric was merely stating what euphoric believed to be a potential optimization (akin to saying 'well, to save on memory you can store the year as only two digits instead of four!'). Mike777b had an excellent response which explained why it was in fact useful - and this was, at least to me, a non-obvious answer that was worth having spelled out.

It did not. euphoric's alternative naming was, at least to me, obvious - ProjectName.exw.YYMMDDHHMMSS.bkp where YYMMDDHHMMSS obviously stands for Year Month Day Hour Minute Second

Even if it had lacked this, I still feel that pointing out a potential optimization is a useful form of good, friendly, constructive criticism and feedback.

That said, it's certainly possible that euphoric could have worded his post a little better. Maybe something along the lines of "Good idea on the format, but are you sure you need the sequence number? It seems to me that unless you are saving it more than once a second you don't really need that part, and so you can save on code complexity by not having to maintain the sequence number handling code..."

But hey, we're all geeks and nerds, not professional PR people. Some allowance must be made for nerdiness.

I feel that your comment here is borderline, but it comes close to violating the CodeOfConduct - it looks to me as if this is being less than respectful, and not assuming good faith on the part of euphoric's suggestion.

From my point of view, your post is of the kind that is more likely to discourage, rather than euphoric's.

I suppose, though, that some allowance must be made here for nerdiness.

7. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by petelomax Jul 13, 2016
• 2285 views

Couple of points, but first a bit of history:
Ten years or so ago, when I added automatic backups to Edita, I went with YMDDHHMM.exw as the file names:
Y was a single digit 0-9, M was 123456789ABC, and it artificially "clocked on" for >1 save per minute.
[That actually meant a hard limit of 10,000 saves in total per day, reducing to 7640 if you started at 23:59:00!]
The backups were mapped back to a real file name via a database, and a primary goal was that the database key was a single (31-bit) integer.
Anyway, all that is just history now, but it is a starting point for the rest of what I am about to say.

Over the years I occasionally regretted the difficulties of rummaging around the backup directory manually, but probably much rarer than you might think.
Being able to (very) quickly pull up an ordered list of all backups of a particular file, without filtering through tens of thousands of filenames, proved far more important.
However, as it happens I am likely to re-implement this soon, and I think human-readable filenames will probably win out this time, and the database might well go.

One thing that became very clear, very early on, was that it was perfectly normal to have misc.e, misc.ew, and misc.exw.
If the backup name had the right extension it was a great help when syntax colouring it, and obviously when restoring it.

There are two dates to consider: the date of the file you are backing up, and the date on which the backup was made.
If you are going to have a date-encoded filename (as well as the system date on the backup file), you need to decide which is which, and stick to it.
In an ideal world you would restore the former(/original timestamp), but in practice that never proved as critical or as useful as I first imagined.
It is probably better, or at least sufficient, for the editor/IDE to flag/colour those it has recently restored.

Version numbers is an interesting option, I'm still cogitating on the benefits it might bring, but already leaning toward forgetting all about timestamps.
Do you have filea.001.exw, filea.002.exw, fileb.001.exw, and fileb.002.exw, or fileb.001.exw, filea.002.exw, fileb.003.exw, and filea.004.exw?
I suspect the latter has more merit, and when you breach 999 just start a new directory, and as a bonus purging old backups should become a breeze.

Ah, I think I just remembered why I went with the obfuscated filenames thing: you can have misc.e in loads of different directories,
and (for reasons long lost in time) I had some idea of backups being "owned" by Edita, all in the same [hidden] directory.
I will always dislike anything that clutters up my working directory with dozens of backup files, but I've nothing against backup subdirectories appearing everywhere.

Anyway, just some thoughts,
Pete

9. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by petelomax Jul 13, 2016
• 2305 views

7640 is just 9999 (as it is 4 characters) minus 2359, and now you mention it, if you went a few over on the odd day, it would still cope anyway, and generously so (690,000+) on the last day of the month!

However that whole filename/timestamp-as-a-31-bit-integer thing only makes any sense at all for a single centralized backup directory, which was probably not my finest idea.

I think I basically agree with everything Mike said.

Pete

PS: back then there was a big penalty for non-8.3 filenames, and win98 would have probably had a stroke if you showed it a filename with two dots in it!

11. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by Mike777b Jul 14, 2016
• 2240 views

Thanks for the feedback.

F5 is definitely "refresh" in the browser world. F5 is "run" in the vba programming world. It is also "Run Project/Include" in Judith's IDE.

I certainly understand the temptation to tackle low hanging fruit. I mean, sometimes you get a flash of clarity on an issue that just begs for immediate implementation for fear of losing that clarity. Building the project interface you mention might fit that category. Why? Because you already have instructions on how to copy an existing project, which can be turned into an empty project with a few carefully placed "cntl-A; del" key combinations, I would think. OK, maybe that is a bit simplistic, but gutting TempMain.exw so it is substantially reduced from 14,500 or so lines to something closer to the expected "Hello, World!" example is something even I might be able to achieve.

Thanks again.

mike

13. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by euphoric (admin) Jul 14, 2016
• 2212 views

I was giving advice to eliminate a redundancy.

The alternative naming was implied: remove the sequential number.

15. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by euphoric (admin) Jul 14, 2016
• 2236 views

Thank you, Mike. The spirit of my post was for optimization and was certainly not to start an argument.

17. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by ryanj Jul 17, 2016
• 2174 views

I fixed some problems in the 0.9.4 branch. Path detection should now work correctly when RedyCode is moved to a different folder. Paths relative to the Redy folder tree are re-detected, yet manually-set external paths are preserved.

In other words, default paths act as relative paths, so you can move RedyCode to a different location (or put it on a flash drive). But if you set paths to outside locations, such as C:\euphoria\include, it will preserve it even if you move redy to a different location. If any path becomes invalid, an error message will be displayed and the Preferences dialog will show automatically, so you can fix the invalid path.

I also fixed a bug in find/replace, where the first match was skipped when searching from the top. and i created a new bug

I'll test for a few more days before making it official. Next on the todo list: get undo working!

19. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by ryanj Jul 20, 2016
• 2074 views

Wow, i didn't notice that. Good catch!

21. Re: RedyCode 0.9.3

• Posted by euphoric (admin) Jul 21, 2016
• 2020 views

Well, the sequential number is redundant for milestone purposes. The preference, then, becomes, as you suggested, "can I eyeball it?" And only unwashed primitive tribes coding in the jungle in their grass huts care about that. hahaha!

I suspect 99.99% of coders don't experience your timezone conundrum scenarios.

But you do make a compelling case to end daylight savings time!