Re: Opinions on new script editor

Kevin Franck:

Nick:

- Comments on separate lines, doubles the length of the script onscreen

We've recently released a hotfix which will remove all of the boilerplate comments when loading an agent procedure. The boilerplate comments will still be visible in the properties pane on the right. Please make sure that you have the latest hotfixes loaded, and let us know if you still have issues.

I just deleted all the boilerplate comments.

Kevin Franck:

Nick:

- Manual indenting. Why? The only indenting that is required is in conditionals.

Lines will auto-indent under conditionals. The manual indent/outdent is included to give you more control. Not sure what the problem is... Is there a particular change that you would like to see in this area?

I can see where it could be useful, but since we can drag and drop lines, it's not really needed.

Kevin Franck:

Nick:

- Indents instead of fold lines, so much harder to see what lines are members of a conditional, especially if it is long
- No more collapsing, so we have so scroll back and forth through long scripts

<snip>

I spent 5 minutes this morning looking at a simple Service Desk procedure trying to figure out where I should put a new 2 line conditional. I'm still not sure if I lined up the statement under the previous IF correctly.

We are currently exploring ways to address this concern. The procedure editor was completely re-written in v6.3. Adding collapse/expand is a very invasive change, and it is not something that can be accomplished quickly.

One mitigating factor is that the v6.3 editor makes it much easier to navigate to sub-procedures. When editing a main procedure, simply double-click a sub-procedure name and the sub-procedure is opened in another tab within the editor. You can also cut and paste lines between the tabs. If you have lots of lengthy procedures, it may make sense to break some of them up into sub-procedures. I am not suggesting that this is a complete resolution to your concern, but it seems worth mentioning in this context.

Maybe have faint vertical lines in the background at every indent spacing?

All my procedures are highly modular so they are already in many sub-procedures, we only have one client using SD at the moment, but for some procedures, adding another client adds ~10 lines to some procedures, more if they want more customisation. I suppose they could then be broken down into client procedures, eg Notifications - Client 1, Notifications - Client 2. It's just nice to keep them all in the same procedure and collapse some out of the way.

I guess I'm getting used to the editor now. But, as someone said earlier, less emphasis on the cosmetics, more on making it more functional and faster. IME, this new editor is slower than the old one, takes about 20 seconds to open a procedure.

Personally, I want something that works, and works fast, so it can keep up with me. On that note, how about a keyboard shortcut for indenting/outdenting.

Kevin Franck:

We don't use any plugins for the script editor, just an SWF file. That should not crash the Flash runtime.

Adobe Flash is a plugin. But you're right, it should be stable enough by now not to crash.