Design of register/memory viewers

[Gunther Piez]

Am Mittwoch 31 August 2005 16:40 schrieb Vladimir Prus:
> Hi,
> I would like to get some user suggestions on register/memory displays.
>
> In current KDevelop, those are part of "Viewers" window. The first problem
> is that the window is modal. The second problem is that it's not dockable.

The first problem is a blocker, it makes the "Viewers" simply unusable. At 
least for me :-)
The second problem is obvoiusly connected to the first, but if it wasn't 
modal, the workaround would be to resize the windows somehow.

> For register view, I have two alternatives:
> 1. Create another window (near the "variables" view), that would display
>    registers
> 2. Show registers in the "variables" view -- add new top-level item, and
>    make register children of that item.

I would prefer the second way... You probably know you can add registers in 
the watch window via typing $eax or $rax, but you have to retype it every 
time you start the debugging frontend.
Another point would be a configurable font for at least the watches, since the 
standard font may be to big for a lot of register/variables.
And if it comes to asm debugging, it would be nice to have configurable types 
for the registers, for example on x86 or amd64 a xmm register might hold a 
v4sf, a v2df or a v16qi or something. But ok, this is a nice to have :-)

> For memory, I can think only about creating another window. It can have
> "start/end" input boxes just like current memory viewer, or it can have
> tabs, allowing to view several memory regions at the same time.

If somebody wants to watch more than one memory region, wouldn't it be 
possible for him to use just another view?
More important in my eyes is a configurable type for a memory element. The 
obvious choice is a byte, shown in hexadecimal, but if it possible to diplay 
it in decimal or binary it would be nice. Also, the base type is often 
something different than a byte, and int or a long seems quite common. The 
optimum would let me use a type defined in my program and even let me specify 
the stride and the amount per line...
And yes, a configurable font size comes in handy when displayng huge amounts 
of data... :-)

Gunther

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