Contributor - UIs usability

Scilab file browser

The embedded file browser may be improved in the following ways:

• The tree of files displayed is not synchronized with external actions on files and subdirectories:
  • when a file or a directory is created, moved, renamed or deleted by a line of code, in the browser we must go to the parent directory and then revisit the former working directory to update its display.
  • In the same way, refreshing the view is missing when an action is performed on files from the file browser of the Operating System.

  • See the report #10159

• Drag & drop a file or directory in another one is not possible. So we must use either command line instructions, or the OS file browser.

• Pressing DEL on a file or directory does nothing. See the report #10149

• Filtering files isn't/can't be performed recursively on subdirectories. See the report #10413

• There is no horizontal scroll bar. Exploring deep trees requires to enlarge the browser, even when it is docked.

  • See the report #11120

• Changing the working directory does not popup it. There is no "previous"/"next" button to move within the history.

Preferences

• preferences() has presently no public option allowing to open the preferences GUI to a specific preferences section or subsection. Some Scinotes menu Options => Preferences items already do it, but in a private way. A preferences(section) option shall be implemented. See the report #14478.

• Allow setting an external editor even when Scinotes is used for Scilab scripts. See the report #11445

• Create a Dev section:

  • Add a way to declare the path to a C/C++ compiler. See the report #12355
    

    • Recode haveacompiler() using this setting.

  • Add a way to declare the root directory of Scilab sources (manedit needs it). See the report #13746

  • Add a way to declare a XML editor (manedit needs it). See the report #13747

• ATOMS section : create it and enable setting every atomsSetConfig parameters. See the report #11580

• Add the following missing settings in proper sections:

  • funcprot() #11491

  • history: saveafterncommands(n), saveconsecutivecommands(%TF) #11370

  • Look & Feel #5146

editvar : variable editor

The present editvar() release misses some features preventing using it to prompt the user to provide a matrix of any type. From this point of view, x_matrix() looks very poor compared to editvar(). Nevertheless, it can't be replaced until the following features are implemented, as suggested in the report #14481:

• an option shall allow calling editvar() in a modal way, waiting for returning
• an option shall allow to send a matrix of strings = message to the user, and display it in the editvar() interface
• an option shall prevent the user resizing the input matrix, i.e. changing the number of rows and columns.

Console

• Having one color for command lines, one for results, and another one for error messages would improve readability. See reports #10142 and #9420

• clc(pattern) should enable clearing last lines up to meet upwards the first line including the pattern (similar to the command recall "!" for the history, but without needing to meet the pattern at the beggining of the line). See the report #6688

• There is a huge room to improve displaying objects in the console:

  • Canceling lines wrapping of wide matrices should become possible. See for instance the report #8139

• Enable highlight of matching [], (), {}, as in Scinotes. See the report #10642