I find documentating my interfaces particularly painful because I need to type everything myself. So I figured that I must not be the only one like this and started to look for a way to reduce my pain but didn't find much.
My question is, is there a shortcut or a way to have Xcode autocomplete my comments? For example, I'd very much like if I type /** + [tab] that it autocompletes to:
/**
* [cursor here]
*
* (maybe some pre-populate a list of arguments for the method below)
*/
- (void)test:(NSString *)testString another:(NSString *)another;
Thanks!
Use Xcode's snippets feature. You can create a snippet with whatever text you want, and add items in the text to be filled in. To create a snippet, just select some text in an Xcode editor and drag it into the snippet library. You can set the completion shortcut, so something like m-comment could be your standard method comment:
Typing the first bit of m-comment then displays the entire shortcut (and any other completions), and accepting the completion adds a comment with the parameterized parts waiting to be filled in. As usual, you can tab from one to the next:
You indicate that a given part of the text is a field to be filled in by enclosing it in <# and #>, like: <#method name#>.
Of course, one of the strengths of Objective-C is that the method name generally tells you what the parameters are. Repeating that in a comment seems like unnecessary extra work. Xcode 3 had better support for scripts included scripts that would automatically generate HeaderDoc comments with parameters. They weren't widely used, though, probably because those kinds of comments weren't really useful.
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I notice in VS2013 that if I highlight text with a view to making a change, the same text is highlighted elsewhere in the file. However, I can't seem to find the option to reflect the change in multiple places when I start typing.
Is this feature just for information only or can I actually do multiple replacements by typing the change once?
This is not supported out of the box.
But there is a nice plugin you can use to enable this, called MultiEditing.
H/T to Scott Hanselman :)
Also note that even in standard VS2013, you can edit multiple lines by "box-highlighting".
This is where you create a "box-selection" either by holding down Alt and dragging a box around the text, or by Alt+Shift+ArrowKeys. Then start typing and the same text will appear on multiple lines.
e.g. with the following text:
Some text to demonstrate
Some info to demonstrate
Some more to demonstrate
...if you Alt+drag a box-selection around all 3 occurrences of the word to, and then type which, it will look like this:
Some text which demonstrate
Some info which demonstrate
Some more which demonstrate
This also works with copy/paste - the pasted text gets applied to all lines within the box-selection.
It's pretty hard for me to describe here, so try it yourself!
For example, I would like to highlight #param, #type, and #return (i.e. epytext declarations) in my Python docstrings. I have figured out how to do this by simply editing Python/Python.tmLanguage; however, I would really like to put this in its own file, for a couple of reasons:
I don't always want to apply this highlighting. It's only for projects that use epydoc as their documentation tool; in other projects, I would want to highlight reStructuredText instead.
When Sublime Text updates, I'd like to have my own syntax as an overlay onto the included features. there are several features of Python that Sublime's author may choose to include in future versions and I don't want to have to manually figure out what I changed each time an update modifies the base Python syntax definition.
I keep my own editor configuration in version control, but I want that to be my own original stuff; I don't want to be burdened with having to carry copies (possibly proprietary? I don't know, it doesn't seem to have an independent license) of syntax definitions that come with Sublime.
Is there a way to put highlighting rules into a separate file, perhaps to only be applied to a particular scope?
Sounds to me like you want to create your own syntax file, inherit from the Python syntax file (source.python), and make your changes and customizations there. Sublime Text 2 uses the .tmLanguage format for syntax files, which is a bit complex, but fortunately most of the work has already been done for you, just by inheriting from source.python.
What you want to do is set up a regex pattern to match the substrings that you want to highlight, and give that pattern a name; something like punctuation.definition.comment.epydoc, to follow the convention set in Java/JavaDoc.tmLanguage. Then, check your color scheme file (ending in .tmTheme) and make sure there are settings for the scope that you've chosen -- or for one of its parents, since ST2 should use proper scoping rules for this sort of thing.
To use the syntax file you've created, stick it in Packages/User (so that ST2 doesn't overwrite it on upgrades), open a Python file in the editor, and then select your new syntax from the dropdown list in the bottom right corner of the window. If you've set up everything correctly, the epydoc strings should change to be whatever color you've set in your color scheme.
Good luck! And post a link somewhere when you've got a syntax file that works, so others can see and use it, as well!
When I extract a method in CodeRush, it has some default formatting. I'd like to change it. Specifically, when I choose the location of the extracted method, CodeRush smashes it in, directly above the method I put the location marker at.
So:
When I choose to drop the extracted method, like this:
It ends up looking like this:
What I want is for it to have some control over how the method looks, at the moment I want to add some blank lines between it and the next method. How can I do that?
Open the DevExpress -> Options dialog;
Go to the Editor | Code Formatting | Blank Lines option page;
Toggle the 'After multi-line members' option.
I requested this here: http://www.devexpress.com/Support/Center/p/S130722.aspx
It got implemented here: http://www.devexpress.com/Support/Center/p/S19229.aspx
There's now a massive formatting subsystem I spent 3 hours fighting that tries to outdo ReSharper's massive formatting subsystem which both need to be able to survive VS Autoformat (CtrlK D) and don't always.
Now you know it's there, I'd appreciate a quick summary from you as to whether you were able to make it do what you wanted!
Is there any way with TextMate to hide comments when editing code? Sometimes I want to see my code with the full comments and other times just want to see the code itself with all comments hidden. I was hoping there would be a way to toggle the display of comments, but haven't been able to find anything about this.
It is something you will need to edit on a language by language basis, but it is very doable. Inside of Bundles -> Bundle Editor -> Edit Languages you will find the language definition that TextMate uses to highlight that particular syntax. Inside of the syntax definition you will find foldingStartMarker and foldingStopMarker.
You can add comment syntax to those to allow the folding off comments themselves. It might be pretty tricky for single line comments, but multiline comments, that have both a clear and unique start and stop syntax, should work fine.
For PHP, for example, we are going to want to add \/\* to the start syntax, and \*\/ to the end syntax. You will need to reload the bundle for these changes to take effect (or restart TM).
Can anyone tell me if there's a quick way to format your code in Text Mate, similar to pressing ctrl K+D in Visual studio?
Thanks!
Edit by Damien_The_Unbeliever:
For those not familiar with Ctrl K+D, it doesn't just indent code - it reformats it using the generally established formatting conventions in the editor - it may replace spaces with tabs or vice-versa for the indentation, ensure code is consistently indented, move braces to separate lines, etc.
TextMate reindenting and reformatting varies a little depending on the language you're using.
You can generally use the Text menu, that depending wether you have an active selection or not it will show you different commands under it. For example, if you have selected a section of code, there will be a Indent Selection menu item. If you have no active selection, it will be Indent Line.
To have this working properly, be sure to select the current language, if it isn't assigned yet (like on unsaved documents). If you're working with HTML, it will simply indent the lines depending on what's above it. It will keep line breaks intact.
If you need something to break out tags on new lines and properly format the document, you should use the Tidy command that is found in the Bundles menu, under HTML (or simply by using the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+H. If you have a selection active at the moment that you use it, it will simply reindent that section. If instead you have no selection, it will properly reformat the whole document, including checking for tag validity and other errors.
The Bundles for other language have similar commands, like XML (still Tidy) and Javascript (that has a Reformat Document command).
As an ending note, I simply suggest to look into the Bundles menu; there are many little gems in it. ;)
Did you look in the menu bar? Under Text you have a couple of Reformat… entries that may fit your needs.
Beside these native features, some bundles — like the JavaScript one — have custom Reformat… commands : click on the little cog button at the bottom and explore your current language's bundle's content.