StrongED Home Page - Wish list -

This page gives the wish list for StrongED. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to get in touch.

Any floated ideas are included on this list; they may not have been 'approved' by people at large!

New features (in rough order of difficulty/implementation time)

• PCA?
• Indent C code as you type (suggested by Carl).
• Source roadmap/descriptions
• Regexp search/replace (suggested by Nicholas Krempel).
• Edit-style search/replace (suggested by Mark Scholes).
• User definable display width for TABs, to complement 'to 4' and 'to 8' (suggested by Dave Appleby).
• Prune lines from a LoF and then start a replace from it, which would only change targets that are in the LoF. This way one could see what targets there are, prune any unwanted ones and then initiate the replacement (suggested by Jeremy C B Nicoll).
• Change Choices=>Misc option to "Load file if it's already loaded": Yes/No/Ask. Ask does: compare time on disk to time as it was when loaded. If different:
  • if the StrongED version is unchanged, silently discard the old version
  • if the StrongED version has been edited, put up DCS
  (suggested by Andrew Black)
• StrongED asks if you want to reload a file that is open for editing when the file on disc is changed by a third party. Checking if the file is modified could be done when the loaded copy gains the input focus (suggested by Dave Appleby).
• LoF, LoT and Throwback windows use custom bitmaps (fastchars) instead of OS' system font (suggested by Philip Ludlam).
• "Insert Text" Wimp message (for macro inserters - see 'specs' file)
• When programming Infobar displays name of function caret is in (suggested by Maarten Bezemer).
• Ability to turn on/off Toolbar and Infobar of individual views (suggested by Bent Bracke).
• Optional green title bar for unaltered saves (suggested by Carl).

New features (difficulty completely unknown)

• Use ISpell for spell checking.
• Use of the Impression abbreviation dictionary (suggested by Alex Wiggin).

Things unlikely to be implemented

• When F10 is pressed (e,g in BASIC to run the file without saving, there could be a variable StrongED$RunPath to run the !Run file of the application instead. This would work in a similar way to StrongED$Mode etc.
  There is no need for this. The actions tied to F10 can be altered to accomodate this.

• Auto opening of the spell check window and highlighting of the word you clicked (there's no feedback as to whether your click worked ATM) (suggested by Mark Scholes).
  I'm not sure what click is being referred to here but opening the spell box first or creating a Clicklist are possible solutions.

• Some way of asking a web browser to reload a page when it's been edited (suggested by Alex Wiggin).
  It's unclear what's meant here. If the page should be reloaded from the Filer, then this catered for by way of the Run icon. If the page is already showing and the browser should refresh it then that's outside StrongED's scope. If the browser supports OLE then it's best to use that, otherwise a click on the browser's reload button is required.

• The error message "This entry does nothing" should be a switchable option (suggested by Anthony Frost).
  Current versions have this disabled. Creating an option for it seems overkill.

• Sort out options system.
  This is much too vague.

Things done off the wish list

• Fix ColourPicker crashes (in 4.62)

• Add #warning and #elif to the C mode (in 4.62)

• Optional underscore cursor (in 4.62)

• Dump window/menu stays open if Adjust click on menu - for multiple selections (in 4.62)

• Space => Alt-Space in file save etc (in 4.63)

• Recall in the goto dbox (in 4.63)

• Speak Support. (in 4.64)

• Sort out StrongHelp search paths in mode files. (in 4.64)

• Reload mode files if those in !StrED_cfg are changed. (in 4.64)

• Implement \n in S & R as a synonym for newline. (in 4.64)

• Restrict what you can type into the Goto box writable icon. (in 4.64)

• Load sprites from !StrED_cfg.Resource.Sprites[22] as well as !StrongED. (in 4.64)

• Option to get files to have their width automatically set to that of the longest line. (in 4.65)

• Get rid of duplicate words in spell checker. (in 4.65)

• Source uses throwback for errors. (in 4.65)

• Grab menus should be sorted alphabetically. (in 4.65)

• Ability to 'hide' rarely used modes. (in 4.65)

• Display small fold icons when bitmap used is 8*8. (in 4.65)

• Better error message than "string not found" when spell checking and it's all correct. (in 4.65)

• AutoSave remembers mode a file was in. (in 4.65)

• When interactive help is being offered over the group icons in the choices config, the default is 'this window belongs to StrongED' with undefined groups. It would be better if this said 'Group not defined in Mode file' (in 4.65)

• Can block editing also do overtype in addition to insert. (in 4.65)

• Keyboard navigation for the Spellbox (in 4.65).

• Re-enabling use of headers and footers when printing (in 4.65).

• Control over how numbers get coloured (in 4.65).

• A document history list of the last five documents that were edited in StrongED (in 4.67).

• Correct colouring of multi-line signatures in News (in 4.67).

• Position indicator on the Infobar also displays ASCII code of character under cursor (suggested by Tim Howarth) (in 4.67).

• Tab rulers e.g. StrongED$Tabs = 10,6,20,6,6 to define tab stops (suggested by Steve Drain) (in 4.67).

• Printing of colour and/or effects for source text (suggested by Andrew Black) (in 4.67).
  
• Save as draw for export of coloured source code (suggested by Bent Bracke) (in 4.67).
  Implemented as an export option to either Impression, OvationPro or (X)HTML.

• Allow each group in a mode file to have a title, then present this in the mode choices dbox (suggested by Andrew Black) (in 4.67).

• Command that gets executed on opening a file, specified per-mod e.g. to position the cursor at the top or the bottom (suggested by Andrew Black). Security is an issue though (think ILOVEYOU...) (in 4.67).

• Warn about lines starting with line numbers when editing with line numbers turned off (suggested by Mark Scholes) (in 4.67).

• Right click on LoF opens a new view and moves to the item found (suggested by Carl) (in 4.67).
  Implemented slightly differently; Ctrl-click opens in a new view.

• Mnemonics for marks (!Help, menu?) so that one can remember where they point to (suggested by Jeremy C B Nicoll) (in 4.67).
  Part of the bookmarks window.

• Ideally the various horizontal scrollbar would have an immediate effect (suggested by Carl Hetherington) (in 4.67).

• Menu option to reload the file (suggested by Philip L) (in 4.67).
  Files can be reloaded using the refresh dbox.

• Don't lose the save-as leafname if you accidentally close the window (suggested by Alex Wiggin). (in 4.67)

• File info window auto-updates (suggested by Alex Wiggin) (in 4.67)

• Extra features for LoT (List of Texts (Ctrl-L)):
  • extra column: icon to show if window open, hidden, or iconised.
    Can't see the point of this.
  • extra options: hide all, hide changed, hide unchanged.
    Added in 4.64
  • extra options: iconise all, iconise changed, iconise unchanged.
    Also added in 4.64 but didn't work, fixed in 4.68a4.

• If you delete !StrED_cfg, StrongED periodically produces a message box saying "Not found" - better if it was "unable to find autosave directory" (suggested by Andrew Black) (in 4.67).

• Can StrongED be made to reopen files it had open/check the autosave dir when its restored using !Freeze (suggested by Mark Scholes) (in 4.67).

• Add things to StrongED_OpenDoc message; -readonly option to open a file read-only; also, don't load the file if its already open (suggested by Andrew Black) (in 4.67).

• Ctrl+Shift-dragging a file to a StrongED view inserts only the leaf name (suggested by Jon Ripley) (in 4.67).

• Folding column in window-background-grey (suggested by Uwe Kall) (in 4.68).
  The colour used for the folding column has been made user-configurable.

• User definable colour for left edge of window so one can see where the window border is, which is difficult if there are overlapping windows with black backgrounds (suggested by Jeremy C B Nicoll) (in 4.68).

• Bitmap font selection in global/mode choices GUI (suggested by David Eaton) (in 4.68).

• The option Menu -> Misc -> Locked is also available when the file on disc isn't locked to allow manual locking of the file. (suggested by Steve Bradbury) (in 4.68).

• Could BinSuffix and HexSuffix be added to SyntaxOptions (suggested by Bent Bracke) (in 4.68).

• Allow the strings entered at user defined (\@) locations in shortcuts to be recorded and recalled at other (\@) locations. (suggested by Bent Bracke) (in 4.68).

• Clear instructions on converting Zap fonts to StrongED(suggested by David Eaton).
  The latest version of StrongFont makes this very easy. StrongFont is available from the download section of the StrongED website.

• Scroll Toolbar (Infobar too?) so buttons outside visible part of window can be accessed (a la OvationPro). (suggested by Jeremy Nicoll) (in 4.68).

• It would be nice to be able to switch the List of Found window to show either Leafname or Filename (suggested by Richard Torrens) (in 4.68).

• Print dialogue offering options for number of copies, cancel and printer select (suggested by Alex Wiggin). (in 4.68).
  Except for printer select, as there's no legal way of doing it from an application.

• Display and print with outline fonts (suggested by Alex Wiggin). (in 4.68).
  At present, the file should not contain any control codes (other than newline). It's hoped that this will be changed in 4.69.