Can "Currently Open Documents" go back to where it was?

[Andy Drexler]

Is there a preference item or some other method to move the "Currently Open Documents" window back over to the right in a Project? It is incredibly useful to see the project structure on the left and the open files on the right. There just isn't enough screen real estate to put them all in one column (and that's on a 30" monitor!). 

Thanks

[Fritz Anderson]

On 25 Jul 2011, at 4:38 PM, Andy Drexler wrote:

Is there a preference item or some other method to move the "Currently Open Documents" window back over to the right in a Project? It is incredibly useful to see the project structure on the left and the open files on the right. There just isn't enough screen real estate to put them all in one column (and that's on a 30" monitor!). 

Just to put in a word for how the other half lives, I am bemused that hanging file lists on both sides of a document window should count as a frugal use of screen real estate. I kept trying to get that drawer out of the way of my work, and BBEdit kept shoving it back.

Many of the responses to BBEdit 10 come from the point of view that a particular way of doing things is obviously ideal, and changing it can only be explained by imbecility and malice. Bare Bones is in a harder position: They have a wide customer base, and what's obvious to some of their users isn't obvious to everybody. It's their job to decide what will best serve the most customers.

I'm not criticizing you. I'm just remarking on how our different needs pose a very difficult problem for the people who are trying to serve us.

— F

[Alex Satrapa]

On 26/07/2011, at 09:26 , Fritz Anderson wrote:

Just to put in a word for how the other half lives, I am bemused that hanging file lists on both sides of a document window should count as a frugal use of screen real estate. I kept trying to get that drawer out of the way of my work, and BBEdit kept shoving it back.

From my perspective, living on an 11" MacBook Air, using horizontal space is quite frugal compared to using vertical space. I wish there was a way to put the title bars and tool bars on the left side of every window.

On one hand, there is no way to incorporate drawers into full screen mode.

On the other hand, they're using MDI, there's no reason they can't put another pane/column on the right hand side.

On the gripping hand, I prefer multiple windows, with tabs. To me the only "drawer" I really need is "documents associated with this window". I have Finder (or Yep/Leap) for organising "projects". I don't need my text editor pretending to be a file management system too (i.e.: I wish the "Project" list was collapsible).

Different strokes and all that.

Alex

[Rich Siegel]

On Tuesday, July 26, 2011, Alex Satrapa <gr...@goldweb.com.au> wrote:

>On the gripping hand, I prefer multiple windows, with tabs. To me the
>only "drawer" I really need is "documents associated with this
>window". I have Finder (or Yep/Leap) for organising "projects". I
>don't need my text editor pretending to be a file management system
>too (i.e.: I wish the "Project" list was collapsible).

View -> Show Files should do it, and that's sticky for the
project (as far as I recall).

R.
--
Rich Siegel Bare Bones Software, Inc.
<sie...@barebones.com> <http://www.barebones.com/>

Someday I'll look back on all this and laugh... until they
sedate me.

[Wrong Size Glass]

I have a similar issue as Andy. Some of my projects have close to 100
code files in them. The shortened project list isn't nearly enough
room for me.

On Jul 25, 5:38 pm, Andy Drexler wrote:
> There just isn't enough screen real estate to put them all in one
> column (and that's on a 30" monitor!).

Fritz, I understand it seems odd, but spreading out horizontally is a
good solution with iMacs, MacBooks & LCD's that are much wider than
they are tall.

[Rich Siegel]

On Monday, July 25, 2011, Wrong Size Glass <wrongsi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I have a similar issue as Andy. Some of my projects have close to 100
>code files in them. The shortened project list isn't nearly enough
>room for me.

Every other section in a project window can be collapsed -- or
hidden entirely; that may be worth a try. (See the View menu.)

Enjoy,

R>

[Alex Satrapa]

On 26/07/2011, at 10:00 , Rich Siegel wrote:

View -> Show Files should do it, and that's sticky for the project (as far as I recall).

Oh, I know about "Show Files", but it doesn't quite do what the "Documents" drawer used to do. "Show Files" will give me the side bar with "Project", "Currently Open" and "Recent Files". Of those, "Currently Open" and "Recent Files" are collapsible, while "Project" is not.

If I'm editing a bunch of unrelated files, it is sometimes useful to have them all in the same window — they'll be visible under "Currently Open". I want to collapse "Project" since it contains nothing of value to me.

Alex

[Wrong Size Glass]

On Jul 25, 8:53 pm, Rich Siegel <sie...@barebones.com> wrote:
> Every other section in a project window can be collapsed -- or
> hidden entirely; that may be worth a try. (See the View menu.)

Rich, I know the other sections can be collapsed. The problem is that
not every file I have open in a project window is part of that
project, and repeatedly expanding & collapsing sections to find what
I'm looking for is just awkward.

I'm not knocking version 10 - you guys have done some very nice things
in it. It's just that the changes in the project management features
(limitations on creating new files in a project window, immediately
saving new files created in a project window to the last used
directory (even if you don't want to save them there, or save them at
all), shorter project list, etc) makes version 10 not work well for me
at all.

Some on the list have commented along the lines of "stop complaining
just because you don't want to change the way you do things". Well,
how I work works very well for me, and has since BBEdit version 4. I
don't want to change my workflow if I don't *have* to, and since
upgrading to version 10 isn't a requirement I'll stick with 9.6.3.

Once again, I'm not knocking version 10, it's just that some parts of
10 are very different from what we were accustomed to. Quite a bit of
feedback on this list has basically been "Wow, this doesn't really
work the way it used to - is this supposed to work this way? Am I
doing it wrong? Did I miss something? Is anyone else having this
issue?". And it's true that quite a few things that we've all been
using for years (and years) have changed enough to disrupt our
workflow - and that can often happen when major changes are made to an
application. It doesn't mean those of us affected by these changes
will abandon BBEdit, it simply means that version 10 is not for us.


WSG

[Andy Drexler]

I understand different people have different use scenarios. My fond wish is that there is some setting somewhere that could allow me to put the open files list back where it was in the previous version. (It's worth noting that, I believe, the open file window didn't even show up until version 8 or 9 - and it became extraordinarily valuable). I guess I'm thinking that maybe BBEdit could have some more flexibility so users could put those windows where they want them (like you already can with palettes). I use the program on MacBook also, and I would definitely have a different window arrangement requirement there. 

It would also be great if "Live Search" could be turned on be default in every document.

[Roland Küffner]

Hi,

Am 26.07.2011 um 03:22 schrieb Wrong Size Glass:

> On Jul 25, 8:53 pm, Rich Siegel <sie...@barebones.com> wrote:
>> Every other section in a project window can be collapsed -- or
>> hidden entirely; that may be worth a try. (See the View menu.)
>
> Rich, I know the other sections can be collapsed. The problem is that
> not every file I have open in a project window is part of that
> project, and repeatedly expanding & collapsing sections to find what
> I'm looking for is just awkward.

When I drag some files from the Finder on the BBEdit icon I get a MDI window without a Project section in the File List and "Currently open windows" taking up almost all the height. If a file belongs to an already open project it goes to that window instead. I don't know if it takes a specific combination of settings to achieve this but it sounds that the behavior you want may be already there.

To add my two cents to the "new window discussion": I find v10's window handling a major improvement to the older versions. In the older versions project-unrelated windows kept opening in existing projects, messing them up and forcing me to shuffle windows around manually. That doesn't happen anymore. The project files "feel" much more separated and I'm much more confident to find a specific window when I'm looking for it.

It would be a nice option to have a collapsable project section in the file list though. I guess, a future update will eventually bring this together with the ability to resize the sections.

Have a nice day,
Roland

[Dave Fitch]

On Jul 26, 12:53 am, Rich Siegel <sie...@barebones.com> wrote:

> Every other section in a project window can be collapsed -- or
> hidden entirely; that may be worth a try. (See the View menu.)

Oooh... that's much better. Is there a way to change the section size
though? Sometimes I have a long list of open documents and have to
scroll through a tiny section [only displaying 6 documents] when if I
could just make the section bigger I could see many more...

Dave

[Steve Kalkwarf]

On Jul 26, 2011, at 12:06 AM, Andy Drexler wrote:

> I understand different people have different use scenarios. My fond wish is that there is some setting somewhere that could allow me to put the open files list back where it was in the previous version. (It's worth noting that, I believe, the open file window didn't even show up until version 8 or 9 - and it became extraordinarily valuable).

The document drawer (multiple documents in one window) has been around for so long that my checkins history doesn't include it. That means we wrote it in the bad old Projector days.

The Windows palette (Window->Palettes->Windows) has been there practically forever, and depending on your needs, may be useful.

> […]

> It would also be great if "Live Search" could be turned on be default in every document.

defaults write com.barebones.bbedit Editor_AlwaysOpenQuickFind YES

Steve

[Andy Drexler]

Steve -

Thanks for the Live Search tip - works perfectly. Is there a resource for other preference items that can be accessed through defaults?

Thanks again.

[Maarten Sneep]

On 26 jul. 2011, at 18:58, Andy Drexler wrote:

> Steve -
>
> Thanks for the Live Search tip - works perfectly. Is there a resource for other preference items that can be accessed through defaults?

The BBEdit help, "Expert preferences". It says so in the manual.

Maarten

[MacCooler]

On Jul 25, 4:26 pm, Fritz Anderson <fri...@manoverboard.org> wrote:

> I'm not criticizing you.

Yes you were.

>I'm just remarking on how our different needs pose a very difficult problem for the people who are trying to serve us.

No you are not.

The fact of the matter is that the current placement sucks. EVERY
editor I have, except for BBE10 (or is it X), has the files on the
RIGHT, not the LEFT.

Like Rich Siegel I like tabs as well, most of the time. In BBE I
didn't mind the drop down in place of tabs.

BB seems to be going the way of Apple. Do it our way or f-off.

Speaking of the "other half" (an arrogant statement) how about tab
completion!

[Watts Martin]

MacCooler wrote:

> The fact of the matter is that the current placement sucks. EVERY
> editor I have, except for BBE10 (or is it X), has the files on the
> RIGHT, not the LEFT.

Really? Every editor? All the editors that I see tend to list
files/projects on the left, and either use tabs for open documents --
which means open documents show up along the top or the bottom,
generally speaking (see XCode, TextMate, Coda) -- or a concept much like
BBEdit 10's (see Espresso's 'Workspace', or Sublime Text 2, which
inexplicably does both).

By sticking open files in a separate drawer, BBEdit 9 wasn't doing "what
EVERY editor does," it was doing its own iconoclastic thing. It also
wasted an awful lot of screen space. Unless you closed the drawer, of
course, and just had the list of project files and used the little
dropdown to change files. Which you can do in BBEdit 10, if it floats
your boat. In any case, I for one am happy to see the damn drawer go the
way of the dodo.

> BB seems to be going the way of Apple. Do it our way or f-off.

BBEdit has always come across to me as, to use someone else's phrase,
opinionated software.

> Speaking of the "other half" (an arrogant statement) how about tab
> completion!

For completing... what? Is this something different than the "Complete"
command on the edit menu, bound by default to F5, or are you suggesting
that we should be able to bind that to TAB the way TextMate does, so TAB
does different things depending on context? Because while I wouldn't
mind that, judging by how much people freak out over small things like
whether the file list is on the left or the right side -- can you
imagine? -- I bet that would cause one heck of a poop storm 'round these
parts.

--
Watts Martin <lay...@gmail.com>