Proper TAB on dev

[RacingDog]

When one normally uses TAB for code layout it is seriously irritating when developing on the DEV that in the IDE source editor, TAB doesn't work as in any other text editor on the planet. Instead it does the Windows Form thing of moving to the next control, which is totally useless.

So can we please have a Text use for TAB when inside the Source Text Editor on the DEV please? Please nicely, grovel, before I throw the DEV at the wall!

 

[agraham]

If you mean the Basic4ppc IDE editor in what way does TAB not do what you expect? I move between Basic4ppc, Visual Studio (and now Eclipse - guess why ) and in all them I have no trouble with TAB which behaves similarly on them all. I normally use TAB and Shift-TAB to change the indentation of a line or a selected block of code, are you expecting different behaviour?

Oops, I typed ALT instead of Shift - now changed. The use if it is so ingrained I couldn't remember the key combination, after so many years it is so automatic that I just do it.

 

[RacingDog]

Like I said, it does the Windows "goto next control". You know, that which happens on a form when you use tab to change between buttons and other controls. In this case it is the Hints box under the main text box. Another tab skips back again. This is the same on both the SIP and the fold out hard keyboard

I have an XDA Stellar/Windows micro 6 with .NET CF 3.5.

I can't see an option to change this in either the IDE or the Windows Settings.

The desktop IDE is fine, no probs at all.

Word Mobile is fine.

I also have a Dell Axim x51 PPC that is my previous device that I haven't quite got around to binning yet despite lack of use. That has Windows micro 5 and CF 2.0. Same effect, tab skips between controls instead of inserting text.

Anything else I need to mention? I may be an hour, I'm off to the bookies for about an hour for my daily fix of 50p bets on the dogs. (You get to stand right underneath the air-cond, ulterior motive! ) Won't be too long.

 

[agraham]

Ah! I didn't understand your abbeviation DEV to mean that you were referring to the device IDE, I thought you meant the desktop and that DEV referred to the development environment (Visual Studio is called DEVENX.EXE - my bad!) - I did wonder why you might want throw a PC at the wall .

On the rare occasions that I do edit on the device I use a single space for indentation instead of a tab. Have you noticed that the device IDE can transform tabs to spaces by Tools -> Untab and that the desktop can reverse the process by Edit -> Retab?

 

[RacingDog]

After I've lovingly laid out a program I'm always reluctant to trust gadgets. Bad memories. I've probably got a mix of tabs and spaces by now, having switched too and fro, dodgy.

Hmmm, interesting though don't you think? The options only work in one direction per environment? I smell a rat! Someone knows about this and has been fudging it. I say fudging 'cos micro word manages to do tabs.

 

[agraham]

The "editor" is actually just a standard multi-line textbox control. A long running sore for users of the Compact Framework is that there is no RichTextBox which forms the basis for many desktop simple editors. At one time Microsoft did plan one but it never got implemented and there don't seem to be any commercial ones - and I've looked many times to try to find one to wrap as a library. My HtmlPanel is the closest I've come to displaying Rich Text on a device, although WebBrowser is also an alternative. I guess Erel took the easy way out rather than having to implement a full blown editor from scratch.

 

[RacingDog]

Ahuh. OK, well sundry distractions later, I was just chilling outside with a glass of wine and me whippet and the missus in the cool of the evening, when the cynical side of me decided to fish the mobile out and create a form with a multi-line text box on it. Guess what? Tabs work perfectly!

There is no simple facility for changing the size used by a tab, but then there isn't in the big boys world either, so you have to do something clever to vary the tab size.

I'm really not sure what we are supposed to see as other wrappings in big Windows differ. The Delphi TMemo (the closest they get to a multi-line TextBox) has extra bits that for example VBA in Excel doesn't. The VBA version doesn't do Tabs, the Delphi one does, but just as here Delphi gives no immediate control of tab size. The Delphi TRichEdit doesn't give any tab size control either. But both Delphi wrappers provide a WantTabs property which can conveniently switch support on and off. (It's years since I used these in Delphi, so I may have missed something).

So, the TextBox in the library has tab support added (as it doesn't seem to be native), but then the box in the dev ide has either taken it away again, or is a more basic version. You'd need to look closely at the source code to figure what is the actual case. Perhaps our glorious leader could just tell us?

Whatever, my guess is that it is the tab size issue which stopped the TextBox (as per the library) being used in the dev ide.

Umm, TRichEdit, as Delphi calls it. There must be something similar for CF because Word Mobile exists. But may be WM is like your html thingummy and not the real McCoy. Baffled of Fleet.

 

[agraham]

There must be something similar for CF because Word Mobile exists.

Word Mobile is a native, not a .NET application. Pre-WM5.0 Word Mobile used some undocumented way of presenting rich text. From WM5.0 I believe Word Mobile uses the native Rich Ink control, which too is not documented, at least officially. Various people have tried over the years to pick it apart and wrap it for .NET use, OpenNETCF probably being the most complete. However I found none of them useful enough to bother taking further as it seems to be a fiendishly complicated control. If I was doing this professionally I might have had a go but as I do this for fun nowadays, and because I'm not really interested in the GUI side of things, I haven''t bothered.

You'd need to look closely at the source code to figure what is the actual case

If you want a poke around use .NET Reflector.

 

[RacingDog]

Ye gods! And there was me thinking mobile telecomms was a minefield!

You know, when I started, a design spec was a slim A4 document. Over time these got thicker. I'm sure you remember all too well. When the firm I was with first started to drift from general real time towards mobile telecomms, it happened via the Inmasat M and B satellite systems. We thought then that 4 fat A4 volumes was complicated. Then we discovered GSM and had to cope with a long shelfful. Then they added GPRS etc. And then, as you well know, on top of that, the development environment exploded similarly.

It's all too much. I'm glad I'm out of it. I used to feel I was in some sort of control when the majority of the software in a black box was mine. But now? One's software is a gnats cock in a haystack, to mix my metaphores.

So I shan't be poking round further. Maybe one of our younger bretheren is interested.