[Christine]

I am preparing a vote for future EmEditor features. I have summarized all suggestions, and am preparing the list to start the poll. Please review the following list, and if your wish is not listed or needs any clarification, please reply to this message and let me know. Thank you!

– Auto close brackets, commas, etc.
– Smart tabs: A in front of a line inserts blanks according to shift width.
– Smart tabs: A will delete a shift width of space at the start of the line.
– Tab management and navigator.
– Speed up the close file speed.
– Auto highlights word at cursor after 200 milliseconds.
– Line to separate functions Select paragraph (scope).
– Improve glyphs used for ASCII control characters.
– Use Output Bar for search results in normal Find dialogs.
– Outlining/highlighting nested blocks.
– Preview html with Firefox in Web Preview plug-in .
– Exclude binary files (Find in Files).
– OutputBar.GetText() method.
– Ability to have more than one selection.
– Insert Special Character dialog enhancement.
– Grab Text feature in Opera/Thunderbird.
– A ‘Search for folder names’ feature.
– The different section can apply the corresponding Configuration and the Plug-in.
– “Print All Files” feature.
– Redesigning the dialog boxes for larger screen.
– Favorite files feature.
– Split view that views two different file in the split view.
– Coloring using ANSI escape codes.
– Customizable configuration order.
– Disable error on startup when file is not found, add “Apply All” check box on this prompt dialog box.
– XML pretty-print support (also may be for other tags languages like HTML).
– A checkbox to enable/disable all hotkey.
– Search/Replace dialog needs escape sequence suggestions, just like for regular expressions.
– Binary editing “mixed” mode, where the hexadecimal view is on the left side, and the ASCII corresponding to it is on the right side.
– Change appearance of the text in Binary (ASCII view).
– Enable a special color for “outside current region” and “this line”, by default.
– Printing features: mirrored margins, columns, water mark, size-text-to-fit-page, leave-out-doxygen/javadoc-comments.
– A printing mode for 80-column code in 2 columns on an A4 with mirrored margins and line numbers.
– Header/implementation fast switch. Include file link.
– VS9 integration.
– Line numbers with leading zeroes: 000, 002, 003, …
– Collective editing over the internet.
– Run plug-in commands from a macro.
– Select text, hit one key, and find the next occurrence using current find options.
– Option to minimize EmEditor to tray.
– Copy as HTML/rich text/text.
– Paste as HTML option.
– Paste as… Dialog box.
– Ability to edit while in Print layout (print preview) mode.
– At start of an external tool, a dialog box appears to ask for the current argument.
– Docked window for the last files used: sort by name and modify date, with a “My Favorites” section.
– Add more dialog box objects (such as Grid control used in Snippets plug-in) to macros.
– A “history-based” GUI control that remembers what you have typed, available in macros as well.
– Ability to make plug-in custom bars “dockable” or displayed in tabs.
– More documentation for plug-ins.
– The ability to write plug-ins in language besides C [e.g., script-based plug-ins].
– Ability to use Multiple Arbitrary Simultaneous Carets.
– Output window have Wrap / No Wrap configuration options and a full configuration module.
– A view of search results.
– The ability to not only highlight matching parentheses and brackets, but also matching quotes.
– Duplicate tab option for EmEditor.
– Make phone numbers hot so when click on any such number, trigger a modem dialer that automatically dials the number.
– Direct access to Customize dialog box from Find dialog.
– Support for Intellisense for different languages (IE Python, Java, JavaScript).
– Display only first keyboard shortcut in menus and toolbar hints.
– The file path customizable on “History” tab of “Customize” dialog box.
– Ability to use a shell consoles.
– Allow bookmark appearance (colors, icons) to be customized.
– Allow copying of all the lines being bookmarked.
– Syntax highlighting: ‘Apply highlighting’ button to redraw editor view without closing properties dialog.
– Syntax highlighting: Move/organize words in highlight list.
– Syntax highlighting: Remember scrollbar position in highlight word list when closing properties dialog.
– Syntax highlighting: Warn or disallow input if highlight word length exceeds limit, instead of truncating it after the edit commits.
– Ability to highlight subset of regex match using parenthesis. Match an XML tag name without including < or – Syntax highlighting: Option to choose custom RGB color for highlight instead of indexed color.
– Double-click to enter edit mode for highlighted words, and have the caret placed at the click point instead of selecting the entire word.
– New Save As Format – Escaped Unicode (ASCII+UCN u).
– Better EmEditor icons to associate files (in emedres.dll)
– Improved syntax scheme association i.e. special association rules, like e.g. “All files from the following folder are HTMLs”.
– A “Replace Selection” (“Replace without find next”) hotkey.
– Syntax highlighting supporting nested comments (comments inside comments – some languages allow this).
– In “Display” tab in Properties, an option to edit the color/style of line numbers for changed lines.
– Icon in explorer menu, if added, then make it optional to show.
– An option: matching parentheses are only highlighted when the cursor is to the right.
– “Search and Replace” for multiple terms.
– Copy all text to a temp file, process the temp file with external tool, and replace all text with content of the temp file.
– Dynamically switch between normal text view and hex/binary view.
– When enabled, undo/redo through save is not possible, but when disabled, it is possible.
– Re-design of Options dialog(s) to use a single dialog with categories shown in tree view on left.
– Display number of bytes and lines selected in status bar.
– Ability to create a new document, even if the currently active document is new and un-modified.
– If Find in Files is opened from the tray icon, ability to start typing immediately without having to click on the window first.
– Make EmEditor remember the position of the Find in Files window.
– Ability to show find in files results in dockable window, instead of just another tab, allowing user to view results while also viewing a document.
– Easy access to a future enhanced box-editing option (icon in the status bar or similar).
– Add menu commands: Edit–Enable virtual space, enable virtual space (for column select).
– Add menu commands: View–show ruler, show line number.
– “Save As…” toolbar button.
– Configuration Association by Content.
– Choosing config independently from file extension should be done by event-driven macro rather than hard-coded.
– Tag Jump function: Allow an optional macro to run when people click the pattern.
– Option to put the tab on the bottom instead of top.
– Multiline snippets organized into folders with ability to quickly insert them into text.
– Keyboard shortcuts to snippets.
– Snippets should be stored in plain files to allow easy snippet import-export between PCs.
– Under Properties > Keyboard, option to list commands alphabetically.
– Syntax coloring for escape sequences and regex control characters in the Find/Replace-with text boxes.
– A way to specifically highlight the content (words) only for a diff action, instead of the entire paragraph/phrase.
– A U3 portable application.
– Commands to work on the current line if no text is selected: comment/uncomment, indent/dedent, and join lines.
– Monitor Clipboard and auto paste. A toolbar button for ‘Monitor Clipboard’.
– The ability to open multiple files using wildcards from the command line.
– Keyboard shortcuts to switch between documents by document number.
– Count of how many matches occurred in a search.
– Search results group together under a single button at the beginning of the “Windows” toolbar, with drop down menu to select a specific search result.
– Provide a command to close all open search results.
– When I specify a folder (and subfolders) to search, make the specification sticky – keep using it.
– Allow to split the left sidebar to show two different plug-ins simultaneously, particularly the open documents and the explorer.
– Open documents show less of the path when showing open documents in other folders, only that much of the path that is different.
– Possibility to see list of all open documents and select appropriate when user uses ‘Ctrl-Tab’.
– The auto save saved files to be time stamped e.g. file.01252007.txt.
– Save every few seconds, not only minutes.
– Scope highlighting, where it shows different scopes in different shades.
– Ability to set individual files to be sticky and always stay at the top of the file history list.
– Besides listing the failure condition during the course of “Replace in Files”, list the files that are modified.
– Close a tab by right clicking on it (Single right click).
– Edit the Find in Files search result such that it doesn’t only edit the search result, but also the files associated with each shown line.
– Make search for Regexps and search with Escapes to radio buttons as these two options seem to be exclusive.
– Find in Files should offer the possibility to open the files in EmEditor right away.
– An autocorrect feature that supports wildcards/regex, it will replace specific text as you type.
– The line you are typing always appears in the middle of the screen.
– By pressing CTRL and clicking on line numbers, be able to select multiple non-continuous lines.

– A plug-in that would search for file names and text in files contained in zip files.
– Active browser sidebar–windowed ActiveX control with links outside.
– Projects plug-in: set the sorting type of the files in a project. Currently, folders and files are mixed.
– Projects plug-in: ability to create and add new files and folders to the project by a right-click and selecting “New file/folder…”
– Projects plug-in: option to omit from sorting, strings that started from some symbols or matching to the regex pattern, moving them to the beginning of file, to the end of file, or sort them with previous sorted string.
– Projects plug-in: not to sort strings but mark (with some symbols) not in order located strings.
– Projects plug-in: create own symbol order lists for sorting.
– Projects plug-in: a possibility to define the icons in the symbol list between symbol-category-name and symbol-list-icon.
– Projects plug-in: great thing if it works without a project, symbols just for the active file.
– Projects plug-in: highlight current file in plug-in bar Also, I can’t see which of my projects files are opened, and which are not.
– Projects plug-in: force to use existing Ctags file: Can I somehow force “Symbol List” tab to use Ctags file created by myself.
– AutoComplete plug-in: make it closer to the “snippet” function in Visual Studio “snippet” function in visual studio.
– Snippets plug-in: allow to name the snippet.
– Snippets plug-in: tab stops in the snippets.
– Snippets plug-in: assign a command to type and i.e. type: ifstate -> TAB. Have the snippet put the entire snippet in, with $con1$ already highlighted.
– Snippets plug-in: the ability to complete multiple tab stops by naming them the same and only typing over one.
– Outline plug-in: when edit C, C++, PHP… files, the outline window shows only function or class name not everything below { sign as now.
– Find/Replace dialog and FindBar: when EmEditor window width is too small to show all the FindBar options, please give a “>>” button to show all.
– Search plug-in: display the line text in addition to the line number.
– Search plug-in: to show only the file/buffer name rather than the full path.
– Search plug-in: create a function that will allow searching on the currently selected text in the active buffer that could be used with a hotkey.
– Search plug-in: allow rearranging of columns and remember resizing of columns.
– Search plug-in: allow an option to search all buffers or only the current buffer. Right now it only allows all.
– Search plug-in: a replace text area beside the search text area, when you insert text into replace, it will just replace them.

[CaptainFlint]

Wow, that’s quite a list! :-)

Well, I’d like to add some more:
1. Possibility to show vertical line at specific position to indicate specific column.
Originally posted on the old forum, but unfortunately still not implemented. I miss it very much when I format my ReadMe’s by 80-chars width…

2. Improved auto-indent
Also an old request.

3. More intuitive work with Macro files
Currently when I want to create a macro and assign a hotkey for it, I need to do the following:
a) create and write the new JSEE file;
b) save it (manually selecting the deep My Macros folder);
c) call the Select This command;
d) assign a hotkey.
It is not easy for new users to know about all these steps, it took me quite long time to understand what to do. So, I suggest to simplify this process by:
a) automatically opening the My Macros folder when one saves a file of JSEE/VBSEE type (so that it did not affect the current folder for other files; so that I did not need to get out of My Macros when I want to save another non-macro file);
b) removing the necessity of “registering” a macro inside EE, so that EE always listed all the macro files in My Macros folder (this will also simplify moving the EE’s configuration onto another computer: users will not have to re-register all the macros, EE will take them by their names).

4. Improve file changes detection.
Requested here. To summarize it:
a) add an option to check file for changes immediately after switching to the EE window or to a specific file inside the EE window (even 1 second is too long in some cases);
b) add possibility to turn “auto-check by timer” off.

5. Possibility to mix fonts for drawing characters missing in the current font.
Again, an old request.

And a small problem that needs fixing (I’m not sure if it should be posted in the “feature wishlist” topic, but just to remind):
6. Esc set to Close -> impossible to get out of menu by Esc
Reported here.

[Christine]

Great! Thanks for the suggestions. I have added them to the list. If there’s anything else I can do to help, just let me know. :-)

[negedge]

I would like to recommend a few new features.
1. Another convenient way to select a block of text instead of pressing CTRL+SHIFT+F8: Hold the right mouse button and drag a box.
2. Add a REPEAT command which ask the user to input an integer n followed by a keystroke, then repeat that keystroke for n times automatically.
3. A display option to show the end mark of the current line, not every line.
4. SHIFT+TAB deindent the current line if no text is selected and the cursor is at the 1st non-space character.
5. A more flexible indent/deindent algorithm. In C++ configuration, the editor indents when seeing a ‘{‘ and deindents automatically when seeing a ‘}’. I wish EE can generalized this to any defined keyword pairs like begin/end, if/endif, select/endselect… to support more languages.
6. Extend parentheses/brackets and outline plug-in to support unlimited keyword pairs (begin/end, if/endif, module/endmodule, case/endcase….)

[Christine]

Thank you for your suggestions, negedge. I have added them to the currently running poll. You can now vote for your above requested items in the poll. :-)

[yorkane]

Auto highlights word at cursor after 200 milliseconds.

The different section can apply the corresponding Configuration and the Plug-in.

This two features are crucial to me. :-D

[Christine]

Your suggestions are appreciated, yorkane, however, did you see that your requests were already included in the list above? Thanks you.

[urlwolf]

Christine,

I admire emEditor, a lot, so please don’t take this wrong…
I think that progress (in terms of implementing new features here) is really slow.
We saw changes from 8.01 – 8.05 and they are just small bug fixes. This comprehensive list is virtually untouched.

EmEditor has a strong competition in editors that have huge communities behind and very responsive devs.

Do you plan to release a good chuck of features from this list in a (major) update?
Thanks

[Yutaka Emura]

urlwolf wrote:
Christine,

I admire emEditor, a lot, so please don’t take this wrong…
I think that progress (in terms of implementing new features here) is really slow.
We saw changes from 8.01 – 8.05 and they are just small bug fixes. This comprehensive list is virtually untouched.

EmEditor has a strong competition in editors that have huge communities behind and very responsive devs.

Do you plan to release a good chuck of features from this list in a (major) update?
Thanks

I don’t want you to misunderstand this. Minor updates are only for bug fixes only. This is because adding features in minor updates can cause another bug and I want to avoid that kind of risks. It is also because translation (language pack development) will become difficult if new features are added constantly within minor updates). Please join our v9 testing. I am adding many new features to v9, for instance, snippets and other auto-complete features!

[urlwolf]

Great to hear. Very impressed with the new features.

[urlwolf]

For consistency, someone should maintain the features implemented in emeditor 9 alpha. I can start.

– Auto close brackets, commas, etc. is done
– Multiline snippets organized into folders with ability to quickly insert them into text.
– Keyboard shortcuts to snippets.
– Snippets should be stored in plain files to allow easy snippet import-export between PCs.
– highlight current file in plug-in bar
Snippets plug-in: allow to name the snippet.
– Snippets plug-in: assign a command to type and i.e. type: ifstate -> TAB. Have the snippet put the entire snippet in, with $con1$ already highlighted.
– Snippets plug-in: the ability to complete multiple tab stops by naming them the same and only typing over one.

NOTE: this list may not be exhaustive. Mod please add/remove :)
NOTE2: there are new features not in this list ! Would be nice to have them here so people know they are coming.

I’m very intrigued by filters. Now we can not only output to STDOUT, but also get things into STDIN. does this mean we can have interactive python sessions inside emeditor? That’d be killer.

Also, we can use a formater (your example is htmltidy). Which other formatters do you know that are more language-general?

[urlwolf]

More feature requests:

-symbol list dockable (ie. Under project pane). Important for saving vertical screen space
-Split window like in vim
-Have symbol list for only open file
-More obvious bookmarks (ie highlight line) right now they are almost invisible

[EmUser]

Aha. I want all, I thought that it becomes in the world the most outstanding edition software.In Gui.

[xbeeps]

Feature requests to add to the list:

1) Multiple disjoint text selections and simultaneous editing of all selections: It is already possible to select a column and then edit all rows simultaneously. However, things are not always arranged nicely in columns, and often it is handy to be able to make multiple disjoint selections and then edit them simultaneously. It should be possible to make multiple selections with the mouse (i suggest holding CTRL while making a new selection adds the selection to the existing set of selections), but also using the keyboard (normally holding SHIFT and using the arrow keys makes a new selection. Holding CTRL+SHIFT while using the arrow keys should add the new selection to the existing set of selections).

2) Add “Find in files in this folder” to Right-click menu in explorer plug-in: It should open the Find in Files dialog and automatically fill out the “in folder” input box with the selected folder path.

3) Fallback to “Save As…” if “Save” is unavailable (because it is a new unsaved document).

4) Integration of Perforce version control.

[urlwolf]

1) having some indicator of what has changed in a file would be killer. Hippoedit and notepad++ show vertical lines in the gutter. The thicker line indicates lines in the editor which have changed since the last save. The thinner ones indicate lines that have changed in the current editing session and have already been saved. IDE’s all have this. There’s no reason why editors can’t. It’d be killer in combination with a good integration with VCS (I like mercurial).

2) assign colors to tabs (buttons) per filetype or any other criteria. Done to great effect in ultraedit.

3) split windows like vim, emacs etc is a must. No coder who has tried this would do any amount of coding without it. This may be hard to implement and it requires distintion between buffers and tabs/windows (maybe).

4) Mark-based folding (example, vim does it with # {{{ code here # }}}

[urlwolf]

another one:
5) pretty format (aligning).
This is a beautiful chunk of code:

	vc <- vcount(graph)

	  if (is.null(params$niter))     { params$niter      <- 500  }

	  if (is.null(params$maxdelta))  { params$maxdelta   <- vc   }

	  if (is.null(params$area))      { params$area       <- vc^2 }

	  if (is.null(params$coolexp))   { params$coolexp    <- 1.5  }

	  if (is.null(params$repulserad)){ params$repulserad <- params$area * vc }

	  if (is.null(params$weights))   {

	

	

vim, emacs, and slickedit can do this. It doesn’t seem terribly difficult right?

[ygao]

can keyboard map have profiles setting? just like theme setting ?

[Yutaka Emura]

urlwolf wrote:
1) having some indicator of what has changed in a file would be killer. Hippoedit and notepad++ show vertical lines in the gutter. The thicker line indicates lines in the editor which have changed since the last save. The thinner ones indicate lines that have changed in the current editing session and have already been saved. IDE’s all have this. There’s no reason why editors can’t. It’d be killer in combination with a good integration with VCS (I like mercurial).

In EmEditor, if you display line numbers, modified lines are displayed as thick bold-font line numbers. I hope this helps.

[Author]

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