Block select mode in Visual Studio...and in VO!

[ic2]

I just found something very handy in Visual Studio. When you select content dragging your mouse in your editor while holding the Alt key, you get a block selected instead of everything between your start and end point.

I always try to add // comment align starting at the same position by starting with some tabs. Sometimes a longer program line forces me to either accept not all comment to align or add tabs in all the other comment lines.

But with this block select mode I could add the tabs for all lines, or at least multiple lines at once.

And guess what? It also works in VO. If I knew that earlier it would have saved me much time).

Dick

[Chris]

Hi Dick,

It also works with Shift+Alt+Arrow keys for block selecting text with the keyboard, it's pretty standard way of doing this in editors.

[FFF]

Not to forget: "Shift"-"Shift" + Arrow in Xide

[Chris]

Yeah, had to be original in some way
Actually, Alt+Shift+up/down was already assigned to goto next/prev entity, so had to use something else.

[ic2]

Hi Chris,

It also works with Shift+Alt+Arrow keys for block selecting text with the keyboard, it's pretty standard way of doing this in editors.

So even after working that long with VO it is still possible to discover a feature which is new to someone.

I found this is also the case with one of few real productive features from Windows, the Clipboard history which enables you to paste earlier cuts/copies using Windows key + V. But only if switched on via Settings/System/Clipboard.

I use this all the time, but so far I've only heard from one out of appx 10 IT professionals whom I asked that they knew this feature.

Dick

[Chris]

Hi Dick,

I also wasn't aware of this, but I just tried Windows key + V and got directly an option to enable this feature. Thanks for sharing!

Btw, one XIDE feature that probably nobody knows about, is that it supports alternative clipboards. If you right-click on the "Default Clipboard" item in the status bar, you can choose among 10 different clipboards, each with its own contents.

[ic2]

Hello Chris,

Btw, one XIDE feature that probably nobody knows about, is that it supports alternative clipboards. If you right-click on the "Default Clipboard" item in the status bar, you can choose among 10 different clipboards, each with its own contents.

Sounds brilliant.

Last week I have replaced a WPF based screen with a directory treeview with checkboxes with a Winforms screen. I could not get the databinding working to set and read the content of the checkboxes and non working databinding can't be properly debugged.

I ended up asking it at Stackoverflow, got a solution from someone who took the effort to do quite some rewriting in my code (by heart) but after clearing the bugs in that I ended up with one of the famous hard-to-find exception vaguely pointing to something in the WPF XAML. I sent it to a colleague who has done a lot of .Net projects lately and even he couldn't get it working.

The Winforms screen didn't need databinding so not only it worked pretty quickly but any remaining issues could be debugged. I am thinking of abandoning WPF except for those cases where it offers advantages not available in Winforms, or when I start with a sample or earlier program using WPF.

That would give me the opportunity to possibly use Xide. I have got one question: I remember in the past that there was some discussion about going from a VS solution to a Xide project and v.v.

Do you have any documentation about that. The most ideal situation would be that I could switch, if necessary, between both environments but I thought that was not (easily) possible?

Dick

[Chris]

Hi Dick,

The code you can easily share between both IDEs, just need to point them to use the exact same .prg files. If you want, send me your solution and I will send you back a XIDE project file (it's only one file needed) that you can use side by side with the VS solution and can use it to tedit files from within XIDE.

But that's about plain source code. When it comes to designers (like the winforms editor), the two systems are very different, so you will need to decide in advance with which and only IDE you will be manually editing them. My suggestion is that since you are already using VS and have people working with it, to keep using it including the designers. But you can use side by side for editing, I am also doing this for some projects of X# itself.

[ic2]

Hello Chris,

If you want, send me your solution and I will send you back a XIDE project file (it's only one file needed) that you can use side by side with the VS solution and can use it to edit files from within XIDE.

My suggestion is that since you are already using VS and have people working with it, to keep using it including the designers. But you can use side by side for editing, I am also doing this for some projects of X# itself.

That's a good suggestion and a nice offer and I think that is what we should do. But isn't it a idea to instruct how to create Xide project file(s) from an existing VS solution, so everyone can do that?

I will then try to do it and correct the procedure if necessary for future users.

Dick

[Chris]

That's a good suggestion and a nice offer and I think that is what we should do. But isn't it a idea to instruct how to create Xide project file(s) from an existing VS solution, so everyone can do that?

I will then try to do it and correct the procedure if necessary for future users.

Problem with this is that developing a tool that needs to handle all of the idiosyncrasies and quirks of the VS (MSBuild) project system to convert it to a XIDE project and then also debug/bugfix/support it, is the absolutely last thing I ever want to do in my life