So, I have finally tried out Choicescript IDE, and wow is it a nice and helpful little program.
However, there are two things that sadly makes it a bit unworkable for me to actually type in. There might be solutions for it, but I haven’t found them yet.
1: I can’t see my cursor position when I type. In Notepad++ I can see the column position of the cursor, which enables me to track my indentations (I use spaces). It also feels like when I imported my project, my indention got a bit messed up? However, I am not sure, because it is really hard to tell since I can’t see exactly. I do realize that if I used the auto indentation system (or tabs) this might be less of an issue, but for a game that’s 95% complete I want to stick to what I have for now.
2: There is no way to change the font interface for anything but the edit window, but what s even worse is the size of the scroll bars. I have a hard time even seeing them, they are so narrow. My eyesight is not the best, and my screen is not the largest, so I am left using the arrows to move around, which is clunky and annoying.
Other than that it really feels nice, but sadly these two things make it a bit unworkable for me.
1a: I found using the “dark” or night background and switching the color palate around helped in that regard a bit for me. Also, I have a habit now, when switching between scenes or such to use my mouse and “place” the cursor exactly where I know it is. Once I do that it is easier to follow.
1b: The CSIDE uses two spaces as a standard, so when you import a project at first, it is a mess until you standardize each individual indentation. When I used notepad++ I only used a single space system so it did take me about 4 writing sessions to get used to the new “standard” …
2: I don’t know a solution here, except I adjusted the edit window to align with my “natural” pointer position on-screen and it is usually there when I mindlessly move my mouse cursor … perhaps @Fiogan or @Vendetta can help us by offering up a better solution…
At worse, maybe we can offer up a feature suggestion for @CJW in his CSIDE thread…
When you say you can’t see the cursor, do you just mean the lack of a number display column position? Or do you mean you struggle to see the blinking cursor itself? It could also be possible to provide active line highlighting, which is something Notepad++ does (where the line on which your cursor resides is shaded a different colour to the rest of the document).
I have to say I’m not at all sure I can do much about the size of the scrollbars, without getting too technical, the scroll bar sizes are provided by Chromium (upstream Chrome browser), which makes up a core part of the CSIDE package. I believe this is hard coded, but if I discover otherwise I will report back.
Allowing an increased font size across the application is possible, but very difficult, as everything still as to fit to the same dimensions. Is there any particular areas/components that spring to mind as particularly bad?
