Sublime Forum

Feature Requests after review - and a couple of bugs

#1

Gidday mate!

I have been evaluating you editor over the last few weeks and I am quite happy with it, generally.
I have come up with some suggestions for enhancements for you review. A lot of these enhancements are from
functionality that exists in other editors I use, like PSPad, Notepad++ and RJ Textpad.

Enhancements

  • menu/toolbar option to show/hide white space (currently white-space only viewable when text selected)
  • menu/toolbar option to comment/uncomment selected lines/current line
  • menu/toolbar option to Duplicate selected lines
  • menu/toolbar options for set to uppercase/lowercase
  • toolbar options for Find, Find in Files, Replace, Replace in Files
  • Find in Open Buffers should be merged into Find in Files (Does Find in Open Buffers mean Find in Opened Files???)
  • scripting language support (WSH-Javascript or Python maybe) with API to access the Editor, etc.
  • Syntax for HTML-ASP JScript (currently VBScript)
  • File Compare function (link to WinMerge maybe?)
  • Syntax Highlighter editor
  • Toolbar editor (turn on/off buttons on toolbar)
  • set/unset Bookmarks with mouse click - click in left bookmark column to set/unset
  • SQL Syntax: include @ and @@ as part of highlighted word when selecting, i.e. double-click on variable
  • SQL Syntax: include # and ## as part of highlighted word when selecting, i.e. double-click on temp table name (local or global)
  • Option to Trim Trailing Spaces on save
  • Option to auto-reload file when file changed outside of Sublime, rather than being prompted
  • Prompt to re-load file if changed by another program should appear when focus returned to Sublime and not when Tab gets the focus
  • integrate HTML Tidy to assist validating and formating HTML code
  • unable to select text and then drag it with the mouse and drop into new location - have to Ctrl-X and then Ctrl-V
  • column mode functionality - selection, delete, edit, insert
  • Find in Files Search Results should be presented in a TreeView with each file as a top-level node and matching lines as children. This will take up less space which is helpfull
    when a large number of files is returned. Top node would also include number of matches found.
  • Find in Files also to include ability to do replace - either in opened files or search path

Bugs

  • SQL: when text selected and press single quote then selected text is not replaced and single quote inserted before and after selected text
  • SQL: having a string ‘C:’ is treating the ’ as an escaped single quote but in SQL to escape a single quote is to preceed it with another single quote i.e. ’ and column.a = ‘‘x’’ ’
    this is causing the rest if the SQL file syntax highlighting to be back to front for string contents - changed string.quoted.single.sql to remove \ from expression
  • Join Lines function includes the line after the last selected line

Thanks
John Byrne
Melbourne

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#2

Hi John,

A number of the things you talk about already exist. Some of them exist in the PowerUser package (which can be found here: sublimetextwiki.com). Some of them are built in. Some of them don’t exist at all. It seems you’re pretty new to Sublime, and you’re missing a lot of the functionality it has, so I really recommend learning more about it.

Having said that, here’s the rundown of the things you talked about, as far as I know them:

  • menu/toolbar option to show/hide white space (currently white-space only viewable when text selected) ** Don’t know about this **
  • menu/toolbar option to comment/uncomment selected lines/current line ** Ctrl+/ does this, also, check out the menu: Edit/Comment **
  • menu/toolbar option to Duplicate selected lines PowerUser package includes a keyboard shortcut for this: ctrl+shift+d.
  • menu/toolbar options for set to uppercase/lowercase ** Check out the Edit/Change Case menu. **
  • toolbar options for Find, Find in Files, Replace, Replace in Files Not sure what you mean by “toolbar option”. These all exist in the Find menu.
  • Find in Open Buffers should be merged into Find in Files (Does Find in Open Buffers mean Find in Opened Files???) **Agreed. The “Find in Files” should have a option, like **
  • scripting language support (WSH-Javascript or Python maybe) with API to access the Editor, etc. There is a very good api for creating plugins, and lots of plugins exist. It’s Python based. See here: sublimetext.com/docs/api-reference
  • Syntax for HTML-ASP JScript (currently VBScript)
  • File Compare function (link to WinMerge maybe?)
  • Syntax Highlighter editor You can create new files for syntax highlighting, but I don’t know of good documentation for it.
  • Toolbar editor (turn on/off buttons on toolbar) Good idea.
  • set/unset Bookmarks with mouse click - click in left bookmark column to set/unset
  • SQL Syntax: include @ and @@ as part of highlighted word when selecting, i.e. double-click on variable
  • SQL Syntax: include # and ## as part of highlighted word when selecting, i.e. double-click on temp table name (local or global)
  • Option to Trim Trailing Spaces on save Exists in one of the packages, I think the PowerUser package.
  • Option to auto-reload file when file changed outside of Sublime, rather than being prompted Absolutely.
  • Prompt to re-load file if changed by another program should appear when focus returned to Sublime and not when Tab gets the focus I agree, I also pushed once for an option to reload all files at once.
  • integrate HTML Tidy to assist validating and formating HTML code
  • unable to select text and then drag it with the mouse and drop into new location - have to Ctrl-X and then Ctrl-V
  • column mode functionality - selection, delete, edit, insert **This exists, and is Sublime’s greatest feature IMO. It’s called multiple select, and it beats every other editor’s column select mode. **
  • Find in Files Search Results should be presented in a TreeView with each file as a top-level node and matching lines as children. This will take up less space which is helpfull
    when a large number of files is returned. Top node would also include number of matches found.
  • Find in Files also to include ability to do replace - either in opened files or search path
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#3

concerrning SQL:
The langauge definition is wrong and suffers PL/SQL. It is copied from the Textmate bundle and not an intrinsic part of Sublime. So I did my own - which is incomplete as well but supports my programming needs and style.

selecting some characters and pressing a single quote (or an opening paranthesis) does indeed not replace the selection but surrounds it with the quote or paranthesis. This is not a bug. It is a feature I often use and miss in other editors.

I never select a line if I want to join it with the following one. I didn’t even know it was possible. Try joining lines without a selection.

Explore the *.sublime-options. You can remove @ from wordSeparators in your sql.sublime-options,

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#4

What is the status with basic text drag and drop. It seems weird not to have that built in.

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#5

Hi

Although Sublime doesn’t yet have the ability to drag and drop text, you can move selected text about by using Ctrl+Shift+Up (or down) arrow

Cheers,
Mick

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#6

I actually like the keyboard-driven option better. The mouse-driven style always bothered me for some reason. Just Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down works great for me. Even with multiline selections!

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#7

I’m curious as to how high this text dragging feature is on the list of priorities for SublimeText 2, or if it’s even on the list at all. I would love to see this feature added. I constantly find myself instinctively trying to drag text around and it’s somewhat annoying. At the least I think it would really cool if there were someway to hold down some key combination that would allow me to “drag” selected text throughout the document with the arrow keys. Actually I think I might prefer that to mouse dragging. There are so many times when I want to drag text to the right or left and I’m stuck doing a cut/paste.

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#8

You can use Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down arrow. Or do you mean some other kind of dragging?

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#9

They mean dragging,

I personally prefer using keyboard bindings for this :smile:

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#10

[quote=“jjbyrne”]Gidday mate!
…
Bugs
…

  • SQL: having a string ‘C:’ is treating the ’ as an escaped single quote but in SQL to escape a single quote is to preceed it with another single quote i.e. ’ and column.a = ‘‘x’’ ’
    this is causing the rest if the SQL file syntax highlighting to be back to front for string contents - changed string.quoted.single.sql to remove \ from expression
    …
    Thanks
    John Byrne
    Melbourne[/quote]

Hi,

@jjbyrne: Following your tip (to change string.quoted.single.sql), instead of removing the \ expression, I’ve changed it as follows:

previous contents:

<string>\\.</string>

new contents:

<string>\'.</string>

This is the line 489 on file SQL.tmLanguage

Now it’s perfect to me and the syntax highlighting is working as it should for SQL (so far)… :smile:

@SUBLIME DEVELOPERS: Would it be a problem to make this correction available to everyone? I mean, it’s just a simple correction on one character. You could even send it to Textmate team… Just saying…

Cheers,
Cristiano

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