[rkward-devel] UI wishlist

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi,

On Wednesday 18 April 2007 23:46, Prasenjit Kapat wrote:
> On 4/18/07, Michel Lang <michellang at gmail.com> wrote:

> > - save size/proportions of R script file and R console. Save editor
> > preferences (e.g. show line numbers)
>
> Yes, this always bugged me. Everytime I start RKWard, and open the R
> Console, a huge part of the workspace and script file area is taken
> over by this console.

certainly a good idea. I'll have to look into how this can be done. Could you 
add it as a feature request, for now? That way I'll be sure to be reminded 
(and the TODO file, where we also keep such information is getting terribly 
crowded).

> > - project/session handling (for dealing with multiple files all part of a
> > single project) as already integrated into kate. Session handling may
> > include saving the current working dir, workspace and folding
>
> That would be really nice.

I don't know, if folding state can be saved at all. It looks like kate itself 
doesn't do this, so likely it is not. On the working dir, see below. The open 
files, we currently save in the workspace, which I think is a good solution. 
Restoring the last used workspace is probably a good idea (but should be 
optional). Maybe add a feature request, as well.

> > - file system browser tab, as included in kate, to easy access generated
> > files as PDFs from within rkward.
>
> That would be nice, but viewing non-R (.R, .RData, etc) files would
> need to spawn a different process (not a child process), like kpdf (or
> xpdf or..) for PDFs, which will have to be outside RKWard. Does any
> IDE do that? Kate (ok, kate is not an IDE) doesnot. If you try to open
> a pdf file from kate's file browser tab, it will try open it as a text
> file in the editor, rather than starting a completely different
> process with kpdf (or xpdf or..). I do not remember if Kile does
> that.. Will try it when I get home.

Yes, nice idea, and would certainly be helpful even if it only works on .R 
files (but I guess, somehow it should be possible to at least handle the most 
common other types, as well). Once again, could you add this as a feature 
request?

> > - add option to automatically setwd() to location of script file, or to
> > only setwd() to first opened script file (or drop this with session
> > support)

> 3. Now you open an existing workspace.. No change in WD. This is where
> my suggestion might be helpful.

Yes, it's probably always reasonable to change WD in this case.

> 4. Instead of opening a workspace, you might open an existing script
> file. No change in WD. This is where your second suggestion (to
> setwd() to the first opened script file) might be helpful though :)
> 5. Suppose I open an existing workspace (and suppose this setwd()
> automatically), and then I open an existing script file. Should
> setwd() be called again?
> 6. The vice-versa situation of 5...

Not sure, whether there is any generally desirable solution, here. Sometimes 
changing the WD is just what you want, sometimes it would be very disturbing 
(and then - what should happen, if you switch from the script file back to 
the console? Change WD again? Where to?). I think even adding this as a 
global option would not be too helpful. Right now, I think the best we could 
do is to provide a menu action / shortcut to switch to the directory of the 
current script file. Thus changing WD would become easier in some cases, but 
would still be manual.

Another item for the feature request tracker, I'd suggest.

Regards
Thomas
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/rkward-devel/attachments/20070419/1a07b424/attachment.sig>