[wingide-users] Evaluating WingIDE

[Michael Hipp]

Wingware Support wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Michael Hipp wrote:
> 
>>Is there a development roadmap for WingIDE?
> 
> Yes, but we don't make it public anymore.  However, I can comment on 
> the priority of specific items you're interested in.
> 
>>(I have some issues that are difficult to ignore and wondering if they 
>>might be changed soon.)
>>
>>How responsive is Wingware to enhancement suggestions and bug submissions?
> 
> In any case, we're very interested in hearing what it is that you find 
> problematic -- initial impression and usability issues are 
> particularly important to us!

Thanks, Stephan. And thanks for all who responded with their enthusiasm 
for Wingware/WingIDE.

I have now purchased the Windows version of WingIDE and I'll soon add 
the Linux version (as soon as I can get back to developing on Linux.)

Since you made the offer, here are my issues I mentioned.

The "A" list:
-------------
- Ability to truly hide the horizontal tool area - it still takes up 
valuable editing screen space even when hidden.
- Ability, from the GUI, to change the colors for syntax highlighting. 
(I find some of the color defaults to be particularly problematic on the 
3 systems I routinely use. Examples: The dark blue of Python keywords is 
too similar to black, the light blue of function names and constants is 
pale and washed out.)
- Ability to move/hide the small tool bar above the editing window that 
contains the back/forward buttons and the class and function selectors.
- Improve color syntax highlighting:
      - 'True' and 'False' should be colored as Python keywords like
          'None'.
      - Python operators (e.g. +-*/) should have their own color.
      - Color parenthesis (), brackets [], braces.
- The tabbing and indentation often seems to have a mind of its own. 
Sometimes it won't indent a line no matter how many times I hit the tab 
key. And why won't tabbing work between the end of a source line and a 
end-of-line comment (to align the comments in a block). I have to resort 
to the spacebar.

The "B" list:
-------------
- Provide a "Hide" button directly on the horizontal tool area.
- Improve the little tiny icons to the left of items in the tree in the 
vertical tool area. For example when browsing code in the current 
module, most of the icons are some slight variation on a green circle. 
Not easy for the eye to differentiate. Komodo Pro does this well by 
using different colored circles, squares and triangles. The difference 
is stark. I can provide a screen shot if it would be helpful.

The "C" list:
-------------
- Improve the size/color/readability of the icons in the main WingIDE 
tool bar ("Windows Defaults" theme). They're small and hard to discern. 
There is a lot of "dead" pixel space around them.

A lot of the above has to do with gaining more screen space for the 
editor window. Much of my work is done on my laptop which has only 
1024x768 so maximizing editing space is a priority.

Thanks,
Michael