On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 18:15, Nick Treleaven nick.treleaven@btinternet.com wrote:
On Tue, 8 Jun 2010 18:59:35 +0200 Jiří Techet techet@gmail.com wrote:
To be honest, I find the new build dialog in 0.19 (and how it interacts with the session-project) pretty confusing - when you use it for the first time, you have no idea what it does (I had to look at the sources to be sure).
I assume you mean the 'Set Build Commands' dialog when you have a project open. I think that may be a bug - IMO the Project Properties Build tab should be shown instead. It is confusing ATM.
There are several confusing things:
1. The first section in the dialog ("filetype commands") depends on the currently opened document. This wasn't clear to me at all. First I thought that this was static. Then I noticed that it changes but I was wondering how you set the file type. I would prefer if there was a combo box where the item gets automatically selected based on the current file, but which you can also manually change. This will give people some indication that the first group is dynamic.
2. What you say - when the project is open, it's not clear whether you are editing global options or project ones. IMO by build->set build commands you should always set the global options and in project properties the project options. Things get confusing when you start changing semantics of menu items based on whether the project is open or not.
3. The popup dialog for "make custom target" should be more flexible, not hardcoded for item 2. I think there should be a new variable, e.g. %t, which, when found inside command, causes that the window appears and then substitutes %t with what the user specifies. This will make it usable for other commands too.
4. non-filetype commands deserves a better name - I quite like your "general" commands ("global" could be confused in the context of setting global/per-project options). And I would also put them first in the dialog - starting from general options to more specific options (which means that execute command should come second). I had a problem that somehow automatically I started editing the commands in the first group (filetype) even though I wanted to edit the second group (non-filetype).
OK, I wanted to write more things I dislike but after spending one hour looking at the dialog I think I start understanding what's behind it. There really needs to be a clear indication that the first group is dynamic and I think the combobox is a good way to do that.
Regards,
Jiri