Hi! I was thinking about how to improve the current menu handling, keybinding handling, toolbar handling, ... because now nothing of that is user-configurable.
So let's start the discussion of how to improve all of that (probably for Code::Blocks post-1.0):
All menus, toolbars and tools would need to be user configurable all in a central place,
with support for keybindings, setting up of icons, ...
Much like MS Office, Visual Studio, etc.
Altrough all of this would need a revamping of how the menus are handled.
Basically you'll have 2 things: Actions, and Bindings.
Actions would be things that can be done in C::B, usually functions/events which are currently
part of a menu, or user-configurable Tools.
And Bindings would be:
-Menu entries
-Toolbar entries
-Key shortcuts
-Commands (like in vi/emacs/autocad)
-Text (for toolbars/menus) -short and long text descriptions-
-Icons (for toolbars/menus)
All of this information could be saved in one of these options: a plain XML,
a straight XRC (with metadata if requiered), or as the rest of the program, in a wxConfig.
Probably the best solution is to modify wxKeyBinder to do all of that, and save everything in XRCs (using tinyxml).
And the XRCs for those settings would have to be in ~/.codelocks/ instead of /share/codeblocks/ because they will be
user-configurable "resources" rather than shared resources.
About Actions:
Each Action could have Properties (or Rules, or Contexts or whatever you want to call):
It's where the Action makes sense or does not.
Like a "Swap Header/Source" Action will only makes sense in C, or C++ file.
Or a "Build" Action only makes sense in a (more generic than a C, C++ rule) compiled language.
SciTE haves something like the Actions I'm referring, but it calls them Commands, and they are very flexible.
For example, in SciTE go to menu Options->Open Global Options File, which will open the SciTEGlobal.properties file.
You'll can find or write at the end of file something like:
#For fixing the identation
command.name.31.*=Fix Indentation
command.mode.31.*=subsystem:lua,savebefore:no,groupundo
command.shortcut.31.*=Alt+Shift+I
command.31.*=fixIndentation
#For hexadecimal editing of the file:
command.name.2.*=Hex Editing
command.subsystem.2.*=3
command.2.*=HexEdit
command.save.before.2.*=2
#The above uses the default Ctrl-2. As the script uses the per-buffer
#table in Lua, you will also need to set:
ext.lua.reset=0
#For running the console inside SciTE:
command.name.3.*=Run in cmd
command.subsystem.3.*=0
command.3.*=cmd
For more of this power see http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTEDoc.html in the part of Commands.
I want to hear your thoughs on this! :D