[Qt-creator] ideas

[Danny Price]

The major flaw with this locator system is that you have to know what  
you're looking for. If I've just checked out a project from someone, I  
won't be familiar with the file structure or classes in which case the  
project tree will be the first port of call. And Nokia thinks it's  
perfectly fine for a 1000-file project to be represented as a flat  
list?!

The frustrating thing about this situation is that it seems relatively  
simple to fix without compromising the locator system or changing any  
QMake or Creator fundamentals - a second file containing file groups  
is one solution. Nokia wants to push Creator but this is a big show  
stopped for a lot of people!


On 6 Oct 2009, at 11:40, Daniel Teske wrote:

>
>> Honestly, for anything other than a toy project you're going to have
> a lot of sources/headers anyway and there's not a whole lot you can do
> in a folder view/source file view.  (I use open documents...which is
> useful for decent sized projects).
>
>
> The consensus on the creator team, is mostly the same. (Not all agree,
> though.)
> That is a project tree works fine for smaller projects, but it has  
> quite
> a few scalability issues for projects. They can be overcome by e.g.
> using manual organization like Visual Studio allows with virtual  
> folders
> or somewhat by organizing the files finer.
> Also the project tree isn't very keyboard friendly. So in Creator we
> have added quite a few navigation shortcuts which in my opinion do  
> scale
> better. And you should really try to use them, chances are that you
> won't miss the project tree.
> That is:
> Ctrl+k (for the Locator) + filename, usually you can open a file  
> with ~6
> keystrokes.
>
> In most cases though, you don't want to open a file, usally you want  
> to
> go to say the implementation of a class, or the implementation of a
> method and for those cases we have a special shortcuts:
> Ctrl+k :, Ctrk+k m, Ctrl+k c, Ctrl+k ., which do
> : => All symbols
> m => methods
> c => classes
> . => symbols in current file (I'm not sure which version we added  
> that.)
> You don't need to remember all of them, I mainly use the shortcut for
> methods and classes and don't use the other. And you are exactly where
> you want to go too, not on line 1, looking at a fullscreen copyright
> header.
>
> There is one shortcut that is even more usefull, that is F2, which
> simply is: Follow symbol under cursor. That is if the method, class
> implementation is actually used in the place you are currently working
> on, then navigating there is just ONE keypress.
> And that the normal case. It also works on #include lines and macros.
>
> We also have Alt+Left, Alt+Right for navigating back and forward  
> through
> your history. Especially Alt+Left is handy after following the code  
> with
> F2 a few times.
>
> And Ctrl+Tab to circle between your open documents, sorted by when you
> last used them.
>
> In between those shortcuts, I haven't used the project tree for  
> opening
> files for a long time, and have it acutally hidden.
>
> We'll continue to improve the project tree to make it more useable for
> people that want to use it and are open for outside contributions.
> But if you want to navigate your project efficiently, we have build a
> few tools for you, which beat the project tree easily.
>
>
> daniel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qt-creator mailing list
> Qt-creator at trolltech.com
> http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator