We'll fix Eclipse for you (maybe)

[iulian dragos]

Greetings!

We're wrapping up on the 4.0 release (RC1 due on Friday,
announcementnext week). This is going to be a major release, packed
with new features (scala doc, multiple version support, to name just a
few).

Since we also package a pre-loaded full Eclipse download (and it's
more popular than the update site), we have the chance to tweak some
defaults. A lot of people complain about Eclipse defaults being wrong,
so let us know your favorite tweaks, and we'll try to include them in
the release (no promises though, some things might be too hard to
tweak).

Here's a list to get started:

- Always run in the background
- Auto-refresh
- Show Heap Status
- Disable java mark occurrences
- Always launch the previously launched application
- Build if required before a launch
- Wait for ongoing build during Launch

Anything else?

iulian

--
« Je déteste la montagne, ça cache le paysage »
Alphonse Allais

[iulian dragos]

One of the ideas that came back was to supply a beautiful color theme
for Scala. I think a visual cue would be a great way to signal that
this is a big release, and we need to differentiate from the old
(white-background, Java-based) one.

The initial reaction is a "dark" theme. However, I'm not sold on the
dark theme in Luna. It's half-baked, most icons look bad on the dark
background, some can barely be read (perspective names for example). A
middle ground solution would be a Solarized Light theme (I'm biased,
'cause that's what I use). Any others?

Anyone motivated to contribute such a color theme, based on Solarized or not?

thanks,
iulian

[iulian dragos]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Rafał Krzewski <rafal.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is how Eclipse dark theme looks for me. I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 with
> Ambiance desktop theme (the default, dark theme of Unity shell).
> If you want to work on dark theme for the editor - fine, but please make
> sure it's easy to opt out from it.

Absolutely, that's an important concern. The idea we had was to include this in the Scala IDE (full Eclipse) download, but leave the defaults to what they are currently. This means that a "reset to defaults" would bring back the familiar white theme. Unfortunately Eclipse has no native way to manage color themes, and Color Theme Plugin seems to lack support for some of Scala's syntactic constructs.

By the way, I wasn't very clear.... I'm *don't* want a dark theme for the editor, and find the Eclipse implementation lacking. But other IDEs have used that as a great way to make a splash.. though most people around me stopped using the dark one after some time.

I'm still behind Solarized Light.

iulian

>
> Cheers,
> Rafał
>
> W dniu środa, 8 października 2014 12:58:05 UTC+2 użytkownik Iulian Dragos
> napisał:

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[virtualeyes]

+1 on the opt-out option, some of use a screen inverter, no need for a color theme, blinding white to beautiful black is a hotkey away.

p.s. color themes don't apply to the entire interface, so even with a dark theme there are areas of the UI that are a bit glaring.

p.p.s I can see the bling factor though, Eclipse is pretty ugly out of the box...

[Andrew Gaydenko]

He-he... I"m the next not liking dark themes. But I'd want to say about highlighting: it would be handy if the team will prepare wild fragment of Scala code including all artifacts having highlighting configuration (not too big, say, ~ a half of a page). Users will share own vision at the coloring presenting a png of this code fragment. What do you think?

[iulian dragos]

Another option would be to pre-install Eclipse Color Theme in the pre-packaged download. I'm using a tweaked Solarized Theme, the one in ECT is lacking (selection and line highlight color have the same background, for example).

Upside: ECT allows an easy revert. Downside... I don't see any (it's licensed under EPL, so we're all good).

As requested, screenshots attached.

PS. This does not affect the defaults one gets when installing from the update site. Those remain as they are.

On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 8:09 PM, Andrew Gaydenko <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:

He-he... I"m the next not liking dark themes. But I'd want to say about highlighting: it would be handy if the team will prepare wild fragment of Scala code including all artifacts having highlighting configuration (not too big, say, ~ a half of a page). Users will share own vision at the coloring presenting a png of this code fragment. What do you think?

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[iulian dragos]

In the end it's not possible to customize Eclipse Color Theme and still retain the ability to revert to defaults. We'll ship ECT, but keep the default theme.

I created a variation of Solarized Light that works better for Scala (for example, it distinguishes between vals and vars -- vars are red.. also fixes selection background issues in the standard one). It will be preinstalled, but people have to choose it themselves. In case you want to give it a try, it's here:

http://eclipsecolorthemes.org/?view=theme&id=31291

iulian

[Andrew Gaydenko]

iulian,

It seem I wasn't sufficiently clear with my suggestion. I suggest the team to create a correct Scala code fragment containing all artifacts: vals, types, vars, lazy, keywords, own. loacal. comments, and so on - in accordance with all possible semantic and syntax highlighting items in the Editor configuration. This way further we (users, the team) will share own vision to highlighting using this standard-for-sharing fragment.

[iulian dragos]

Hi Andrew,

I'm afraid that Syntax Coloring should be at position 4 in Wadler's Law of Language design... :) So I'd rather not open that can of worms, especially since the way Eclipse and the Color Theme plugin work makes it impossible (or at least not obvious) to have a different theme than the default one *and* retain the ability to reset back to the default.

So we'll release the bundled IDE with the standard Eclipse theme, but with the ECT plugin preinstalled with an additional theme that's more suitable for Scala (mostly coloring vars in red). There's a standard snippet of code we all have in Eclipse: in the Syntax Color preference page. For completeness, I attach a screenshot of that snippet, using the theme I proposed. However, I don't think it's necessary to agree on a single theme, since the default stays the same... and ECT comes with a bunch of standard ones....

iulian

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Andrew Gaydenko <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:

iulian,

It seem I wasn't sufficiently clear with my suggestion. I suggest the team to create a correct Scala code fragment containing all artifacts: vals, types, vars, lazy, keywords, own. loacal. comments, and so on - in accordance with all possible semantic and syntax highlighting items in the Editor configuration. This way further we (users, the team) will share own vision to highlighting using this standard-for-sharing fragment.

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[Andrew Gaydenko]

iulian,

Aha, I see and am agree.