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AppGameKit Studio Chat / [suggestion] Hints, autocomplete, parameters and error highlighting in the IDE

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Zigi
14
Years of Service
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Joined: 5th Jul 2009
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Posted: 1st Apr 2019 21:18 Edited at: 1st Apr 2019 21:37
Maybe someone already mentioned all this and already in development but it is sort of my first impression regarding the new IDE:

Autocomplete: I have noticed as we type our commands we get suggestions for autocomplete only if what we type is match the beginning of any command. For example if we type 'Get' we get suggestions for all commands beginning with 'Get' but if we type 'Frame', we get nothing because no command begins with 'Frame'. I think it would be useful if we would get a list of commands also that only partially match what we type. For example, when I type 'Frame' I want to see 'GetFrameTime()' command comes up.
It could priorities to begin the list with the ones match the beginning and list the others after.

Hints: It is nice if we select a command and press F1 we get a hint in the help window. What I do like however in modern IDE's like Visual Studio and get used to is that when I hover my mouse over any command, I get a hint pop-up explaining what this command does. It doesn't need to explain in detail as the help guide, but only a 1 liner just to help me get the idea what is it for and if I want more info then I can select and press F1.
Also in the autocomplete list, when we select a command, it should display a short hint what the command does

It could help with discovering commands we looking for.

Parameters: An other thing I get used to in modern IDE's is that when we hover our mouse over a command we get not only a hint but also what parameters the command accept and if we hover the mouse over a parameter, we get what type that parameter should be and a short hint. For example if a command expect an integer and that integer must be an index value then when we hover the mouse over the parameter it should say something like 'Type: int The index number of a sprite' , "Type: float The new position of sprite"..etc
The IDE should know by the position of the parameter which parameter it is. If the first parameter must be type of int, even if I enter a string if I hover my mouse over, it should tell me it must be an int because it is the first parameter and because the IDE should also know which command it is, it should be able to give me a short hint also for the purpose of this parameter like "index of sprite" or "new X position of sprite"...etc

Error highlighting: would be also nice to highlight any errors as we type and tell us exactly what the problem is straight away. It is something that I really like about Visual Studio and even Mono Develop. When we make a mistake, we don't get a generic error message like "does not accept parameter" but we do also get a hint when we hover our mouse over the line with the error telling us exactly what the problem is like "you typed int but expect string did you forget a cast?". VS and MD go even further and offer solutions how to fix the error for example offer to convert int to string. Of course I don't expect all this from the IDE of AGKS but at least that much, to highlight the errors as we type it and when we hover our mouse over try to be a bit more specific about what the error is like "typed int but expect string"

All the above I mentioned could help us to be more productive and more simple to get started with AGKS.

Thanks.

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