Cudatext: need proposal for the Config dialog

[Alexey-T]

@tmsg-gh we had SynWrite. user talked about its bad config dialog. I asked the user: give me 'vision' of your config dialog. he thinked/thought and gave me the proposal.

• what tab-sheets in dialog
• what options in the each tab in what order

I made it. let's do it again here? i can make this dialog.

also to @jairomartinezA @kvichans @OlehL @dinkumoil

[MiroslavMatas]

at general - agree…
but!
current Config have ability to search (very important) + description to options (sorry, also very important)
so - if will be possible to implement these two topics…

…on some cases will be complicated to decide what category is parent to what option - but that is the life

[cser]

Do you meen to change this to some like this:

In other case it seems to be not very nice to make dialog like in SynWrite.
...although, the style of dialog is not critical

[Alexey-T]

nope, I mean dialog like in Synwrite
(plugin OptEditor will be kept)

[kvichans]

@cser Do you know about Sections?

[dinkumoil]

@Alexey-T

In general, having a fancy settings dialog like in other applications would be nice.

BUT: This significantly increases the effort necessary to introduce new options, removing existing but obsolete options or changing the range of possible values of options (e.g. converting an option from boolean yes/no type to a tri-state type).

Since the existing options dialog provides a search feature, grouping of options into sections and subsections and good descriptions of the options, I vote against a new settings dialog in order to save development resources for more important things.

[kvichans]

I vote against a new settings dialog in order to save development resources for more important things.

+

[cser]

@kvichans

@cser Do you know about Sections?

No, it means that something like I suggested already exists. So I have no more suggestions.

[tmsg-gh]

My main problem with default/user.json is the unstructured way the files look like. That was why I suggested splitting options into basic stuff everybody will want to set when or after installing Cud and the more "esoteric" options which people can investigate at their leisure. This idea was shot down and that's fair enough.

But perhaps we can do this: a fancy dialog like @Alexey-T outlined for those options deemed to be important (yeah, I know, that's subjective but we could discuss this and err on the side of including things). All options not in this dialog can be done either by editing user.json directly or the options editor plugin.

My main goal is to make Cud more accessible/attractive to newbies and if that takes some dev resources it may well pay off in the long run by attracting more users. Or perhaps not.

[JairoMartinezA]

I am agreed with @tmsg-gh, could be good to have an Config dialog with the "most important" things that the user needs to modify when starts to use CT.

Considerations:

• Put a Search textbox
• Put a label with a mention "You can use: Option Editor Dialog to control all CudaText features..."

[cser]

@tmsg-gh, @JairoMartinezA, what about add two dropdown lists in dialog for newbies?

            ┌─────────────────────┐
Key binding │Cuda Text original ▼ |
            ├─────────────────────┤
            │Like Sublime Text    │
            │Like Notepad++       │
            └─────────────────────┘
               ┌─────────────────────┐
View (color    │Cuda Text original ▼ │
theme, skin,   ├─────────────────────┤
font, minimap, │Cuda Text dark       │
panels,        │Monokai Sublime      │
toolbars,      │Notepad++ default    │
e.t.c.)        └─────────────────────┘

I.e. a newbies needs two choices to start work. Do you mean something like this?

_If I said something off-topic again, please ignore it_

[JairoMartinezA]

Hi @cser
As commented @tmsg-gh,

... outlined for those options deemed to be important (yeah, I know, that's subjective but we could discuss this and err on the side of including things).

That kind of things that what we need to include in the new "Options dialog" could be discussed in next steps 😄, first @Alexey-T needs to confirm if he at the end consider if to add this new dialog can add worth to CT project.

[cser]

Okey

[halfbrained]

Maybe just clean up the Options Editor. And give a notification with a button to open Options Editor when settings file is opened, like this:

A rough sketch of a cleaned Options Editor:

[teamayu]

I think the options dialog is fine as is. It can be a bit confusing for people new to CT, but in general, the settings are easy to find and searchable, which is a big bonus, so once you get used to it, it's great. A fancy dialog setting may increase your user base though as some people may be quick to discard the editor if they don't understand it.

[halfbrained]

Maybe something like this?

[Alexey-T]

That tree-control is welcome. I would like to get this patch, pls.

[halfbrained]

This is just a sole-less dialog on the screenshot. I'll see if I can add this to 'cuda_options_editor'

[halfbrained]

Does 'listbox_ex' not support headers? I kinda need it to choose and resize columns :) ...

I'm looking through kvichans' code (harrowing experience) and I think I might be able to rewrite dlg with minimal casualties.

[Alexey-T]

listbox_ex dont have headers! 'statusbar' control has it. so place it over the listbox.

[halfbrained]

'statusbar' can give me a menu to enable/disable columns, but I can't see a way to resize cell-width with a mouse (in a filemanager I did it with splitters but it wasn't very nice)...

I need resizing - so user can choose widths, since I can't set it to auto for 'listbox_ex'

[Alexey-T]

So about this whole idea. we will have new version of OptionsEditor from this repo
https://github.com/halfbrained/cuda_prefs
to replace original OptionsEditor with 'Options Editor lite'. and I don't want (now) to write the SynWrite-like UIs because of that.
you can test Options Editor Lite, from Github, it's kind of ready. it needs CudaText 1.133.

[Alexey-T]

Also a note. The author of Options Editor lite
https://github.com/halfbrained/cuda_prefs
may accept your donations to add smthing to his plugin. you maybe can ask him to add SynWrite-like UI or smth more. or this -

            ┌─────────────────────┐
Key binding │Cuda Text original ▼ |
            ├─────────────────────┤
            │Like Sublime Text    │
            │Like Notepad++       │
            └─────────────────────┘
               ┌─────────────────────┐
View (color    │Cuda Text original ▼ │
theme, skin,   ├─────────────────────┤
font, minimap, │Cuda Text dark       │
panels,        │Monokai Sublime      │
toolbars,      │Notepad++ default    │
e.t.c.)        └─────────────────────┘

write him in his Github repo please.