Re: [cdt-ui-dev] Discussion: the outline view

["Alain Magloire" <alain@xxxxxxx>]

> 
> I've written down some of my thoughts about the outline view in CDT into a 
> wish-list. (http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26482)
> I think the overview is a important area where CDT has one of its greatest 
> chances to prove its superiority over other IDEs and editors. Since this 
> list has been rather quiet, I thought perhaps I could start a discussion of 
> what kinds of features that would be interesting and nice to have in the 
> outline view.
> 
> This is my current, personal wish-list (directly copied from the feature 
> request on bugzilla):
> 
> The outline view is one of the absolute strength of the JDT, which I've 
> been using a lot. I'd really love to see a outline view as good as the JDT 
> one in CDT. (Note: I'm using C so not all of this is relevant to C++).
> 
> Some things that I'm missing:
>   * The icons from JDT. Perhaps I'm biased by using the JDT for so long, 
> but I find the JDT icons much more expressive, easier to understand and 
> (sorry to say) more aesthetically pleasing to look at. Some features of the 
> JDT icons I miss:
>     - The distinction red square/green circle between public/private 
> (corresponding to static/non static in C).
>     - The distinction between fields/methods (variables/functions in C) by 
> using a "hole" in the icon.
> 
>   * It would be nice to have different icons for different kinds of 
> declarations (not only struct and union), such as:
>    - variable definition
>    - typedef definition
>    - variables defined within a struct or union
> Also, having different icons for "pure" defines and macro definitions would 
> be helpful, since they often have different purposes.
> 
>   * Also, in JDT, when a method declared in an interface is implemented, a 
> small triangle appears as a icon "decoration". Even though the concept of 
> implementation in Java doesn't exist in C, a definition of a previously 
> declared function is similar to "implementation" in Java. I believe that 
> showing this "implementation triangle" on functions in the CDT overview 
> would be very helpful. (It helps you catch declaration problems, such as 
> non-static methods not declared in the corresponding .h file, or when you 
> by mistake name a function the same as a function already declared in a 
> included .h file.)
> 
>   * In JDT, the type of a variable is shown in the outline, e.g. "foo : 
> int". I miss this in the CDT outline view. Also, the type of the arguments 
> to a function is shown in the declaration. In Java, this is more or less 
> required, since you can overload the same method name with different 
> arguments, which you can't in C (ignoring C++ for now :)). But it would 
> still be very informative and useful in the CDT view.
> 
>   * In JDT, declaration attributes such as "static", "synchronized" etc are 
> shown as icon "decorations". It would be great if C attributes such as 
> "volatile" etc are represented in the same way.
> 
>   * The #include icon is, imho, really ugly and not especially 
> representative, in contrast to the clear and slick import icon in JDT. 
> (Includes are not so important, and should not draw the users attention, as 
> the big blue icon does.)
> Also, it would be nice if the common practice import statements at the top 
> of the source code could be grouped together, similar to the JDT outline. 
> (Even if this is a language requirement in Java, but not in C, making it 
> easier to represent in the JDT.) Perhaps also showing slightly different 
> icons for system includes (<...>) and user includes ("...").
> 
> In short, the overview should give the user a clear, concise view of all 
> relevant structural features of the code.
> 

Agree 200%.
The problem is to gather the information, C/C++ is not as "easy" as Java
in term of parsing.  Just to give you a taste of the difficulty:
most of the time the declaration of a variable, say a structure, is
in a header somewhere and the header is PCH(Precompiled Header, not text)
glossing over the trouble of all the macro definitions, #ifdef's etc ...
And this has to work for Windows, GNU/Linux, QnX, etc ...

Good news, we are working on it 8-) .. albeit slowly.