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IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Eclipse)

Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 8:58 pm
by c4s
Those of you who already worked with Eclipse or similar advanced IDEs definitely know what I'm talking about: example screenshot, another one

In my opinion it's one of the most important features currently missing in the PB IDE (apart from refactoring tools). For those of you who are not familiar with it: Think of it as a way more advanced "status bar quick-help text" that even shows descriptions for each parameter and -- most importantly -- can be easily defined for your very own procedures.

In PB this quick-help feature would basically analyze the source code and pick out information that directly belongs to each procedure (could be extended to macro, variable, constant definitions too). Then whenever the mouse hovers over that procedure name (anywhere in the code!) a small window opens up (kind of like auto-complete) and shows the defined relevant information in a consistently formatted way. It could look like this:

Code: Select all

; This procedure does this and that.
; @param var Description of first parameter
; @param string Description of second parameter
; @return #True if successful, else #False
; @source <a href="http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=54831">PB Forum</a>
; @version 2015-10-10, 1.1.0
Procedure MyProc(var.i, string.s)
  ; [...]
EndProcedure

MyProc(123, "test")  ; Hovering over 'MyProc' opens a mini-help with the above info
Edit 1 (2013-08-01):
I would even like to write such a tool just for myself (if not everyone likes the annotation style mentioned above). Though, first I would have to write a PB parser to get all the required code information... feature request (IDE - Access to internal code information)

Edit 2 (2015-10-10):
Improved wording of title and extended description.

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 10:54 am
by c4s
Honestly I'm kind of astonished that there are no comments or "+1" so far. :shock:

I think it's actually a very important missing feature. Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my initial post. So I just updated the title of this feature request and improved the description.

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 12:23 pm
by ts-soft
+1

and a parsing-tool, to make a simple html-help from comments for libs/modules and so on.

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 1:45 pm
by RSBasic

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 4:48 pm
by skywalk
+1
Enabling plug-ins would give the user even more capability. And the PB team would not be the bottleneck for every small productivity feature request.

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:25 pm
by c4s
Great to see that more of you are interested in this very handy quick-help feature. Hopefully it helps attracting the PB team's attention to it (or ways to enable it, see below) rather soon than later.

skywalk wrote:Enabling plug-ins would give the user even more capability. And the PB team would not be the bottleneck for every small productivity feature request.
True. Too bad that freak seemed to already have something similar ready for us (4.5 years ago) but decided against it. Please consider it again because the possibilities would be endless!

Just picking out some requests regarding the IDE that could probably be implemented by custom plug-ins: This quick-help feature, documentation creation, refactoring tools, mini map, context-sensitive completion, clutter-free fullscreen mode, extended "jump to definition", code cleanup (e.g. marking unused variable names, also here) or a dependency analyzer (just came up with it, could be a separate request, right? ;)).

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2015 10:21 am
by NicTheQuick
+1

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 4:57 pm
by Golfy
As I use Purebasic to help my students to learn an easy language, and I've to learn JAVA to them too... it would be a great way to learn them to add comments !!!
+1 (x infinite)

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2016 12:22 am
by s0ula55a551n
Would like the auto complete to show you the Params for that function or procedure like eclipse does more

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2016 1:09 am
by skywalk
A small but appreciated step would be to show the Procedure return type in the context help at the bottom of the ide. :wink:

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 11:36 am
by eddy
+1

Re: IDE - Quick-Help Tooltip Info (like Javadoc in e.g. Ecli

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2018 1:22 pm
by Taz
+1