The IDE is buggy

[groggily]

I'm using 6.6.4 nightly series.

I'm very sorry but I have to tell you the truth that the ELENA IDE is not a good code editor. It's very buggy. Basic editing features like cut/copy/paste with shortcut keys and even Ctrl+Z don't always work. I found that only the right click context menu works reliably for cut/copy/paste. Sometimes, the IDE forgot every settings I have applied in options and I have to set them again.

Syntax highlighting doesn't work right. For example, it can't correctly highlight floating point numbers. Only the integer part is highlighted as numbers, everything after the decimal point is not highlighted. Punctuation are all in the green color, the same as comments. There is also no support for auto-completion of brackets and auto-indent. There are also countless other minor annoying bugs.

Frankly speaking, ecode editor with my custom ELENA syntax highlighting rules works better as a code editor for the ELENA language. I don't do anything much with the syntax highlighting rules. It's just a copy of ecode's C# syntax highlighting rules with ELENA keywords added. I have not even removed C# specific keywords that are not available on ELENA. The only drawback is I don't know how to set ecode to run and debug ELENA programs so I still need to use the ELENA IDE. ecode supports running and debugging of programs just like VSCode. But I don't know enough about ELENA to configure it to work as an IDE for ELENA.

[arakov]

Sure, there are bugs. I fix them mostly when someone report the bugs because I'm used to it and for me it works ok.
Could you please give me some hints what's wrong with undo / redo?

I'm working on VSCode extension / DAP implementation for ELENA, so it will be possible to compile / debug the program from it. Of course it takes time. But I hope in near future there will be an alternative to native IDE

[groggily]

Could you please give me some hints what's wrong with undo / redo?

It doesn't work? Frankly speaking, I have no idea what's going on, too. Most of the time, the shortcut keys do nothing, e.g: Ctrl+X (you cut the text but it's still there!), Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V (you paste the text but you see nothing being pasted!), Ctrl+Z (it does nothing, as nothing is get undo-ed). But for some unknown reasons, sometimes they do work. But they could stop working whenever they want. It's kind of random.

I would say the only shortcut keys that always works is Ctrl+S.

[arakov]

The program is deterministic by definition. Usually it is a human part that is random :) Ctrl+X is disabled when there is no selection. I didn't realize that the modern editors allow Ctrl+X in all situations. Sure I will change the behavior . It will in fact simplify the code. Probably it is the case for other operations as well. I will check it all. It would be nice if you provide me list where syntax highlighting doesn't work correctly. I will fix them as well.

[groggily]

Please don't blame the fault on me yet. I does select something before pressing Ctrl+X. The problem is the selected text is still there. But the Cut menu entry of the right click context menu does work. This means Ctrl+X doesn't work.

[arakov]

Sure, no blame. I work with IDE very actively and it never happens with me so I wondered why it didn't work for you at all and everything is fine for me.

[arakov]

Now I see what you mean. I didn't work much with 64 bit version, expecting that it must be ok. But there were several nuances with signed / unsigned integers. I will resolve these issues and let you know, hopefully it will be much better

[groggily]

I found another issue. Where does ide60.cfg suppose to be stored? I saw it in the bin directory and I used to think it belongs there. But today I found ide60.cfg is placed next to my test.l program in an arbitrary directory.

[arakov]

Thanks, it is a bug indeed. I will look and fix it asap

[arakov]

I've corrected these issues for 32 bit version.

[arakov]

Please take a look. I've fixed 64 bit version as well, it must work better now. IDE version is 6.6.34 (must be already in the latest nightly build)

[groggily]

I opened a program in examples and pressed the button on the toolbar to run. elene64-ide.exe crashed immediately because of access violation.

[arakov]

Fixed. Please take a look at the recent nightly build (from today)

[groggily]

The problem with shortcut keys seems to be fixed.

[groggily]

I found new problem. Now it's the right click context menu that behaves weird. Instead of opening on where the mouse cursor currently is, it's opening somewhere else.

[arakov]

I will take a look

[arakov]

Fixed. It will be available in the next nightly build

[groggily]

Should you use a framework like Win32++?

https://win32-framework.sourceforge.net/downloads.htm

It's a very thin abstraction layer and I think it will keep you from problems like this.

[arakov]

It will require rewriting the whole code. It is easier to fix existing bugs. As an alternative there will be VSCode extension

[groggily]

Do you use Scintilla for syntax highlighting or your own engine? I found various new problems with syntax highlighting. Please open examples60/rosetta/arrays/arrays.l and you can easily spot the issues. Spoiler: punctuation and numbers are not correctly highlighted.

[arakov]

No I use a simple state machine for this. I will take a look and correct the DFA table, it is quite simple

[arakov]

I've fixed the errors I was able to notice. Let me know if you find something else. It will be available in the next nightly build

[blearily]

@arakov The horizontal scroll bar is broken. It doesn't work. My single line code is too long, it goes past the screen. But it's impossible for me to use the horizontal scroll bar to scroll to the right.

BTW, I'm very glad if you can implement line wrap for the code editor.