Virtual Outpost

Quality is my Product — iOS is my Platform — Software is my Industry

Archive for May, 2012

XCode 4 Column-Wise Copy-Paste Changed – Update

May 31

Posted by Walt Sellers in Daily Work Tips, Regular Post, Tips | No Comments

By accident today, I found that the built-in application TextEdit still supports column-wise copy-paste operations the way I liked them in old versions of Xcode.

I had copied a column of numbers from Xcode and pasted it into a document assuming that TextEdit would just paste it in linearly and I would fix up the format afterward.

SURPRISE!  It pasted in columnar fashion just like Xcode once did.  It made short work of my editing.

A quick test showed that I can hold the option key and copy in columnar fashion as well.

Neither Xcode nor TextWrangler can paste this way.

TextEdit just got more valuable to me for doing work.

My previous blog post on this matter.

Tags:

Xcode 4.3.2 pains and tips 1

May 5

Posted by Walt Sellers in Tips, Tools-Graphics, XCode-4 | No Comments

So far, XCode 4.3.2 has been irritating.  It crashes far too often.  But here is some of what I’ve learned:

Get a funny response from copy and paste in Xcode? Strange response from Xcode from undo?  Did the change not appear in Xcode?  Did lines disappear from Xcode?

These kinds of things usually indicate that a crash will be happening soon.

Sometimes I can recover by changing to another file, then changing back. This does seem to help keep Xcode running.

My editing habits probably contributed a little. I tend to scroll around, then use undo-redo in quick succession as a way to go back to where I was in the file.  Usually this was fine in previous versions, but Xcode 4.3.2 seems to crash a lot right after I do this.

 

Tags:

IDE Feature Wish List – Spell Check Comments

May 2

Posted by Walt Sellers in IDE, Ideas, Regular Post, Software Development, XCode, XCode-4 | No Comments

More things for the IDE (Integrated Development Environment).  Xcode is the one I use for iPhone development,  so hint, hint Apple.

 Check Spelling Inside Comments
This a useful feature, really.  I often use the TextEdit application that came with my Mac and it will auto-correct while I type.  On average, this is a big plus when my fingers get a little out of order and transpose two letters.
Since the comments are about the written communication from one human developer to other human developers, having spell-check is really important.
See my previous posts that talk about having comments written in RTF so we can communicate with more than plain text.  (Why are we still stuck with plain-text source files in 2012?)

Tags: , ,

IDE Feature Wish List – Comments in Project File

May 2

Posted by Walt Sellers in IDE, Ideas, Software Development, Solid Coding, XCode, XCode-4 | No Comments

More things for the IDE (Integrated Development Environment).  Xcode is the one I use for iPhone development,  so hint, hint Apple.

Provide space to comment settings provided to the compiler by the IDE.

We can specify compiler macros and such in lots of IDEs. One example is a preprocessor flag named “DEBUG”.  Yet there may be definitions for preprocessor macros that do not explain themselves.  A deliberately bad example may be  “MAKEOBSCUREOPERATIONSALLOWED”.

If there is a place in your work where you as “why did someone do that?” then you have a need for more information.  And that information should travel with the thing it describes, not in some separate file where it may be lost (or never found).

If there is a slot to make a decision (especially a decision for another file), then there needs to be a slot to record the reason for the decision.

Tags: ,