Apologies if some of these have already been entered -- it's a very long thread.
This comes from the perspective of a total newbie to SourceCoder (though not to TI-83/TI-83+ family programming). So there may be some things here that seem perfectly fine to you as they are, because you have experience with the tool. Please be assured that I mean all of them constructively, as suggestions for making a good tool easier to work with based on problems I have as a new user. (BTW my background is programming, and I maintain my own Web pages.)
1. When I click "Parse file", there's no indication how to view the parsed output. Kerm kindly told me in another article that I have to click the little down arrow, which works, but I submit that's not at all obvious if one doesn't already know it. Suggestion: change it to a "View Source" button. Better yet, why not just display the source immediately, below the summary information, without requiring another click?
2. The syntax check refers to line numbers, but the editor doesn't show line numbers. This would be a huge time saver versus looking for the bit of text given in the error message.
3. The edit window is really narrow, about a quarter of my screen, so I have to constantly scroll back and forth horizontally. This makes it hard to keep my train of thought. Suggestion: offer some option to wrap lines (showing the difference between a wrapped line and a new line clearly) or expand the window, or both. Maybe make the calculator display optional?
4. The page scrolls vertically, and the editor window scrolls vertically. Every time I click Check Syntax, the page jumps so half the edit window is hidden, and I have to readjust vertically. (My screen is 1600x900, and my browser is Firefox 14.0.1 on Windows 7.) Suggestion: create an anchor <div id="somename" at the buttons at the top of he edit window (Check Syntax, Export as .8xp, etc); and when I click Check Syntax go to that anchor rather than the top of the page.
5. The "Export as .8xp" button does indeed want to export an .8xp file. Does that mean my .83p file that I started with has been converted to TI-83+ format? Again, this may just be a matter of the desired route not being clear to me in the interface. I'd like to be able to convert .8xp files to .83p as well, but can't see how.
6. When I put in some deliberate junk (:Blah blah), the syntax checker doesn't flag it in any way I can see. I can see it's quite reasonable for a syntax checker to check only syntax, but in that case I'll suggest it would be fantastic to check also that only
commands are included in the file.
Thanks for listening!
Stan
This comes from the perspective of a total newbie to SourceCoder (though not to TI-83/TI-83+ family programming). So there may be some things here that seem perfectly fine to you as they are, because you have experience with the tool. Please be assured that I mean all of them constructively, as suggestions for making a good tool easier to work with based on problems I have as a new user. (BTW my background is programming, and I maintain my own Web pages.)
1. When I click "Parse file", there's no indication how to view the parsed output. Kerm kindly told me in another article that I have to click the little down arrow, which works, but I submit that's not at all obvious if one doesn't already know it. Suggestion: change it to a "View Source" button. Better yet, why not just display the source immediately, below the summary information, without requiring another click?
2. The syntax check refers to line numbers, but the editor doesn't show line numbers. This would be a huge time saver versus looking for the bit of text given in the error message.
3. The edit window is really narrow, about a quarter of my screen, so I have to constantly scroll back and forth horizontally. This makes it hard to keep my train of thought. Suggestion: offer some option to wrap lines (showing the difference between a wrapped line and a new line clearly) or expand the window, or both. Maybe make the calculator display optional?
4. The page scrolls vertically, and the editor window scrolls vertically. Every time I click Check Syntax, the page jumps so half the edit window is hidden, and I have to readjust vertically. (My screen is 1600x900, and my browser is Firefox 14.0.1 on Windows 7.) Suggestion: create an anchor <div id="somename" at the buttons at the top of he edit window (Check Syntax, Export as .8xp, etc); and when I click Check Syntax go to that anchor rather than the top of the page.
5. The "Export as .8xp" button does indeed want to export an .8xp file. Does that mean my .83p file that I started with has been converted to TI-83+ format? Again, this may just be a matter of the desired route not being clear to me in the interface. I'd like to be able to convert .8xp files to .83p as well, but can't see how.
6. When I put in some deliberate junk (:Blah blah), the syntax checker doesn't flag it in any way I can see. I can see it's quite reasonable for a syntax checker to check only syntax, but in that case I'll suggest it would be fantastic to check also that only
commands are included in the file.
Thanks for listening!
Stan