[Qt-creator] Qt-creator 2.0.0 evalution subjects

[John Vilburn]

Daniel,

I have used Visual Studio for many years and only recently started working with Qt Creator. I have found that I prefer the list of open files in the lower left window (Qt Creator style) over the tabbed windows (Visual Studio style). Thank you for the roundup of ways to navigate. I was unaware of several of those. I will have to remember Ctrl K. I just tried it and I love it!

Aloha,
John

On Apr 7, 2010, at 2:33 AM, Daniel Teske wrote:

> 
>> 2) Working with tabs is very handy. It would be pleasant if you can open
>> multiple documents and switch between them by clicking the tab instead
>> of the up/down arrow.
> 
> That suggestion comes up from time to time, so let me catch the opportunity to 
> explain why we think managing your editors is a waste of time. And do a round 
> up of all the ways you can navigate source code in creator.
> 
> a) Tabs don't scale. That is they work fine if you have 5-6 editors open, they 
> get cumbersome with 10 and if you need more horizontal space then the tab bar 
> then the interface doesn't work at all.
> 
> b) Tabs don't adapt to your working set.
> 
> c) The common solution is to give the user the ability to reorder tabs. Now 
> the user has to manage tabs instead of writing code. 
> 
> d) Tabs force you to limit the amount of open editors, because otherwise you 
> get confused.
> 
> Now, considers this use case description:
> "The users wants to switch editors."
> 
> That's wrong. The user never wants to switch editors, rather switching editors 
> is a mean to some other end. Instead we need to figure out what common tasks 
> involve switching editors. Now I won't do that here, nor have we actually done 
> that, but that's the thinking behind figuring out better ways to help the user 
> navigate. And obviously we are drawing from a lot of experience ourselves 
> developing code.
> 
> One of the common things in many use cases is switching editors in a small 
> working set. That is you are working on file a b and sometimes need to look at 
> c, but much more editors. We have a shortcut for that: Ctrl+Tab
> The list in that window is sorted according to last used.
> 
> Or another common thing is that you are working on multiple classes/functions 
> that relate to each other, but are defined/declared in different files. We have 
> two shortcut for that: F2 to follow the symbol.
> And Ctrl+Shift+U to find usages. (Arguably the second one isn't that helpful if 
> you already had the editor open, but the first one is great even if you know 
> that the editor would be once of the first one in the Ctrl+Tab list)
> 
> And obviously we have F4 for switching between header and source. 
> 
> And then there is: Alt+Left for going backwards in the navigation history.
> 
> Or use the locator (Ctrl+K) to simply tell creator where you want to go. 
> Obviously it can be used to open files, but opening files is a mean to some 
> other end.
> 
> Let me give you an example for that: 
> The use case being: Doing a simple fix in AMethod in SomeClass which comes from 
> someclass.cpp/someclass.h
> 
> With a tabbed user interface, you search for someclass.cpp in your tab bar, 
> search for ::AMethod, find out that the method is not in that file, search for 
> someclass.h in the tab bar, indeed the function is inline, do your one line fix 
> and forgot where you came from.
> 
> With Creator, you can press Ctrl+K m AMet (depending on your project, you 
> probably need to type just 3-4 chars of the name.) Do your one line fix and 
> then use Alt+Back to go back where you were.
> 
> There are a few more like: Ctrl+K c for classes, Ctrl+K : for all symbols. And 
> thanks to a community contribution: Ctrl+K . for symbols from the current file.
> 
> daniel
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