2018-08-08 14:50:04

@99 that is a useful feature indeed. I know that Eclipse has that feature as well, although even more general use than that.

by using alt+up you expand your selection, by alt+down you shrink it. expanding the selection will also select the containing context for example let me give you following example code:

class MyClass {
public void myFunction(String s) {
if(condition)
otherFunctionCall(arg1, arg2);
}
}

lets say, your cursor is on the arg1 token. if you expand selection once, it will select the whole list or arguements, expanding again will select also the body of the if block, expanding further will select the block of the function, expanding further will select the class.

you can then delete and paste or whatever, even use alt+up/down to shift the selection up or down.

and Eclipse has autocompletion, although not as good as VS code. and the indent nav NVDA addon works in it perfectly.

not hating on Ride, just saying that the feature unique to Ride, indent navigation, has been made into a general nvda addon and there are more feature rich editors/IDEs out there.

not sure about VS, but im sure there must be a block selection feature.

2018-08-08 17:43:49

@nidza07, My posts are not useless; I am quite accurately listing out why it is neither a code editor nor an IDE. And practically everything is true, whether you necessarily agree with it or not. Use RIDE at your coding job and ee how long your forced to use an actual code editor or IDE. It'll be pretty damn fast, that's for sure.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-08 17:57:09

Yeah, pretty cool but this isn't aimed to be an editor you will professionally use at your job. This is just a small utility designed to solve one specific problem. Whether you will use it or no highly depends on your use case. You have no use for it, that is pretty okay, but please get over bashing this thing and move on with using a real IDE because you clearly have no use for this so cannot understand why somebody would use it.

2018-08-08 19:37:52

@103, yes, I cannot understand why someone would use it since there are already tools that solve this problem. Perhaps I'm over-analyzing it, but it just seems pointless to me. Something open-source would probably be a better alternative, IMO...

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-08 19:52:05

Alright, people use different software for different things if you didn't know. Somebody might not want to install the huge visual studio package simply because they wont need all the features, and might just want a simple script to do this. If you already use VS and need it for other things, then this is just another feature you will have as a bonus, but not everybody uses that. The indent nav addon comes to my mind too, but note that this program was released before that addod, thus when it was developed that addon didn't exist.

2018-08-08 20:51:04

@104, the thing is that you can customize what you want VS to have. You don't need to install everything. You should go through the install sometime; you can make it as small as 2 GB.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-08 21:07:54

2 GB is smaller for you than this utility provided it is the only thing you need? Alright then.

2018-08-08 22:39:01 (edited by Ethin 2018-08-08 22:39:24)

@107, consider the 2GB mark a baseline. I don't know how truly small you can make it. And no, my install is more around 80 or so gB. But that's because I selected everything.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-09 01:40:39

The point being? Even if you can make it 1 GB, that is still way, way larger than a small utility for one feature.

2018-08-09 04:55:13

My point being that a program that provides much more than just this utility (and that program can actually help you get things done in a productive way and is used by mainstream developers) will get you further than if you use a utility that 99 percent of the world dosn't even know exists and probably wouldn't give a glance to.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-09 12:56:06

99 percent of the world is not blind, so does not need keyboard shortcuts to navigate through indentation in the first place. Also, you do not understand the point that a program does not need to be the most popular one for you to use it. If you use only popular programs, then well, have fun with them.

2018-08-09 18:33:50

@111, I never said I only use popular programs. I simply said that, for something like this, the more popular program may be a better option. This utility could've been written as a visual studio extension, for example.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-09 20:38:55

What is the point of doing that if, as you said, visual studio already offers this functionality?

2018-08-10 00:26:08 (edited by Ethin 2018-08-10 00:29:17)

@nidza07, there wouldn't be. It could be done as an experiment, or as a learning project. I myself in fact got the opportunity to beta-test an extension called CodeTalk. I still have the email where the researcher and I were discussing my participation. I can't remember though why it was dropped -- my participation that is... smile I don't even know if the plugin is still being worked on. Its last commit was 0c5c313 on February 7, so I guess it is, though irregularly. That plugin though focuses more on Glanceability (if I remember right it provided you a tree-view to navigate your code), Real-Time Error information (it played sounds and gave you feedback when an exception was thrown among other things), and Accessible Debugging (it certainly made the debugging experience much easier). Technically this utility does something similar, but not exact; it gives you your code in a tree-like form, but neither makes the debugging experience better nor does it give you real-time error information. You can watch Microsoft Research demoing it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttkNYaPwn6E.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-10 02:07:56

Very on topic right? Anyways, a program has it's purpose and it can but does not have to go beyond it. Glad you helped with a plugin, but this topic doesn't need to care about that.

2018-08-10 04:47:56

Rofl true. And I didn't really help with it, more like beta-tested it.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-11 11:26:13

Not everything is about "but people don't use this at a job! Job! Job! job..."

Using hobbyist tools for hobbyist developers is perfectly fine. Just because it's not popular doesn't mean it won't be useful to someone.

The tool I used to decompile a .NET assembly into source code was about 200 Kb in size and it took about 10 Google searches before I found it, which means it wasn't popular. But it worked for my use case.

Sometimes, people are doing things for their own passions and not for future job prospects, a fact that growing older will help some of us realize. The end goal isn't always a job. So, what if it doesn't help in the job market? So what? People using BGT will find it useful, which means OP has an audience. Yeah, a lot of us won't find it useful, and a few of us out of that "a lot" group have been around a few years to really not need a tool like this. But going around shooting down someone's project is discouraging future budding developers.

You know...my first language (ever!) was BNS BASIC. Can you imagine if someone had told me "Hey, stop using it! People don't use it at a job!"? I probably would not have pursued further programming opportunities from BNS BASIC, and would have ended up taking a different path altogether.

Instead, everyone around me encouraged me to hone my programming skills (I was 12 at the time.) And they'd be so proud when I'd release my little games in BNS BASIC. Today, I'm a full-fledged Software Engineer working on God only knows what.

So some of us can discourage people all we want to because they're not doing things how (you) do them, and you have a right to your opinion. But in the words of a famous comedian, I have a right to my opinion also and my opinion is that you don't have a right to your opinion, because you're selling people short.

I really wish developers would stop coming on here and discouraging other budding developers simply because they're not "up there" with you, oh high and mighty.

Welcome to the information age, where everyone thinks they know everything and so everyone is above everyone.

2018-08-12 03:39:55 (edited by Ethin 2018-08-12 03:40:16)

@117, I do see your point. I just consider it redundant since technically this is already done with VS, even though there's not a detect-scope type thing with it.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-11-05 01:21:07

Greetings to all programmers,
after months of work on many things simultaneously, I am very happy to annouce you, that Ride version 2.0 was released!
I want to thank here for all your support. many of us know, that it's a very long path from usable product to product ready to release, especially if you're using it dayly and it works, motivation to improve it is very small.
But based on the positive feedback, I rushed myself to tune it and thus now I can give you completely new Ride.
Here is a citation from changelog for version 2.0.:

2.0

This is probably the biggest update from the start of this project.
Entire program was rewritten to C#, what involves following improvements:
* General speedup, the program is much faster now.
* Keyboard capturing improvement, keyboard shortcuts won't get misinterpreted anymore.
* For Jaws users, use of special keymap script is no longer required! It is highly recommended to remove it if it is installed.
* Ride now works natively in utf-8 encoding. It means, that you can use it with Python or Visualstudio projects without any problems!
* Option of fixing blank lines was improved. Now it fixes source codes without mistakes.
* Problem with accessing other drives from open dialog was resolved by use of the native Windows open dialog. Although there is still more efficient way to open files through the context menu in operating system, this works now as well.
* Ride now uses appdata folder to save its settings. Thus it can be installed in program files without any problems.
* Documentation was updated, it contains now a description of tools targeted to deal with indentation in code.

Although there are many pros of the new version, complete rewrite brings some issues as well. They include:
* Lost of previous configuration. There is completely new format for saving settings so Ride isn't able to read its previous notes. i apologize for this. I was thinking about writing something like an upgrade tool, which loads previous settings and turns them into new format. But I made a conclusion, that it would be more difficult to make such a tool than set up Ride again so i left this idea.
* Undo option was temporarily removed. I haven't used it much, so I am lazy to reimplement it. It will probably come back in one of next releases.
* Compile option was removed. I don't remember time when I last used it, so I haven't implemented it again. It could however appear in one of next releases along other planned features.
* Ctrl+a shortcut wasn't implemented yet. If you're surprised, why such a simple option waits so long to be provided, I can tell you, that I'm too.

I just want to add, that new update will be offered to you through standard update mechanism, if you're already using Ride 1.3.3. However in spite of this, I recommend rather to download full installer, uninstall previous version and install newone.
It will make less mess on your harddrive, but it is upto you.

I will be happy to hear your feedback. I have been using this version in slightly modified form for few months and resolved all problems I've encountered, but there is still chance I've missed something.
My priorities are speed and reliability, so feel free to complain if anything goes wrong.

I have also seen discussion after my last post and I think it contains few interesting points to discuss about. I will react on them tomorrow, now I'm going definitely to sleep.

Best regards and happy coding

Rastislav

2018-11-05 03:33:59

@Rastislav, particular controls like ctrl+a coudl be handled through something like a rich-text edit control.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-11-05 03:46:10

I am extremely lost. How do we download version 2.0 when the developer didn't include a link in recent posts? Is it all the way back in post 1? Note to others, check post 1, then update.

Journalist and gamer

2018-11-06 02:00:15

Hi all,
@Thork: the link in post 1 is still actual, I have updated description as well with citation from latest documentation and fixed some grammar mistakes, so it should be more understandable for new people coming around this topic.

Now, my reaction on Ride and job. From what I read, I still have feeling that I have explained something wrong.
As a experiment, try to get an experienced sighted developer. Prepare some long and complicated source code, best in C++ or similar language. And show it to him, while you limit the view just to one line at a time.
Then tell him to add some feature to program.
Result?
He would get totally lost and it would take him much time to do even simple tasks.
Why?
I read here a statement, that codefolding is not used much by sighted programmers. Well, that's absolutely untrue. Or better said, it is partially true.
Codefolding as a function of ide is really not used much, although there was pretty large group of programmers making pressure to Vs devs, when it didn't contained this feature.
But many sighted programmers don't need it. It isn't because codefolding as a principle would be pointless, but because they do it automatically directly in their heads.
I know it is hard to imagine for someone who has never seen. Sight doesn't work like ears.
While you can process only one information at once from your speech synthesiser, sight is able to get full page of source code at once. Dev itself is still able to process just one information at once, but his brain will firstly select, which informations are more relevant than others.
Thus when he see a page full of code, he firstly select a part which he wants to work with and then his brain filters out all code that is less indented and more indented than actual level automatically.
Exactly like Ride does. We are analysing here something, that is absolutely normal in sighted community.

It is not about experience. Ride is for beginners as well as for pro developers. It is a tool, which replace the ability of sight to make coding easier.
If you refuse to use it, because you are experienced and don't need to make things easier, well, that's your choice. I think no sighted dev would limit his view to just one line, but we all have our opinions which can differ.
But keep in mind, that Ride is not a learning tool, but a tool for everyday use.

And yes, you can use it in job as well. I have read statements like I will use Vs instead of Ride. Of course you can, again your choice, but there is also third option, that you use one as well as other.
For example, Ride is created in Visualstudio. I was using it full time of development for compiling, debugging and other stuff.
But source files were written in Ride. Firstly in old ascii version, it was pretty disturbing to reencode them instantly to utf-8.
Immediately after new Ride get into phase where I was able to open files in it and edit them without fear that they will get shredded, I used it to continue in development.

Similarly I manage my projects on Android platform. All projects are set in Visualstudio and then edited in Ride. Result is, that I have power of Ride to show me relevant code only as well as power of Visualstudio to manage all libraries, references, xaml files, resources, packages etc. etc. etc.
All important tools of Vs are available from command line. So I have opened code by Ride in one window, command line in other and I can do all what I want.

So it goes if you really want, for anything you want.
If you still have doubts, I can give you another good example. Visualstudio is very popular and many big projects use it. it is often used in schools or in jobs.
But it wasn't always here. Projects much bigger than you can imagine, like Windows itself weren't developed in Visual studio. Even autocompletion wasn't there as well as intelij sense, syntax highlightion or super debugging.
But code indentation was always there, starting with C languages if not longer.
And programmers used it and still use in jobs. Exactly like you can use Ride in job. They made big things just on indentation, exactly like you can do in Ride.

Of course, many things have changed and now some jobs just require you to use Visual studio. And not jobs only, if you want to create graphical application in C# for example, anything other than visual studio would be lost of time.
I don't stop you from using it.
I recommend it!

I use Visual studio too as I said above. And Ride is very useful and effective tool for me to supplement it.
For code as well as xaml files, that is also an area where Ride can make things much clearer.

At this point, I agree it would be better to have it directly in Visual studio as a extension for example.
My goal was never to develop new ide or something like that, but rather bring a concept, which can later apply in other areas.
Thus I am trying to find a way how to code such an extension. But there are few questions which I aren't able to answer yet:
1. How does system of extensions for VS work? How deep access does developer have to its visual components?
2. Let's say that I manage to override key presses on the coding area of VS and process pressed keys. There is a question, how does interaction between app and screenreader work?
Does component receive pressed key first, then decide what to do, where my modification would get applied and then annouce result to screenreader? Or reversed? Is the screenreader first which receive pressed key and then move cursor independently on what app does want to do with it?
Those two scenarios require radically different solutions, so I must firstly decide, whichone is true.

If someone is able to answer it correctly, his help will be very appreciated.

Best regards

Rastislav

2018-11-06 03:13:58

@122, I find it very doubtful that you could get a professional programmer to not use VS and use Ride, something that's not really even an IDE since it doesn't have a debugger or a compiler any more. Now its just a text editor like notepad++ is. So, really, besides code folding (which you said your self, not very many people use any more), what, exactly, makes ride better than, say, notepad++? Screen readers can already tell us about indentation, we have tools that make it possible to navigate code in VS by scope... so exactly what makes your tool better than tools that have been in development for more than 20 years now? And exactly how could anyone convince their boss to allow them to use Ride at their job? Could you addiquitly explain, to an employer, what makes Ride better than every other professional IDE out there? Because that's most definitely the only way your going to convince them.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-05-26 19:48:22

Hy!
I am sorry for resurecting this old and nasty discussion topic, but I have a request for you, @1.
I noticed that many criticisms have been thrown like poison at this little project and I cannot help my self from reiterating other persons point, that being that, if one doesn't have a need for it, iterate your point ones, not again and again.
I agree partly with Ethin, though. I agree that this is not a fully grown ide, not even a code editor, so I am willing to make it at least a decent code editor.
So, I am asking you that, if you can, clean your code up abit and release both the bgt and the c# source to the public.
Another question: can anyone teal me how to add a message that will appear after my posts?

2019-05-28 17:25:13

Hi,
@124: thank you for your interest. smile
The true is, that I have made some huge progresses with Ride in last months. namely, I have learned how to code visualstudio extensions and found, that cooperation between VisualStudio and Jaws is far better than I've expected and I can override behavior of pressing arrow keys in VS code editor without being interrupted by Jaws, what is very good message. It means, that Ride has clear way to VS, where it can cooperate with all its great functions like intelij sense, code debugging, project management etc. without any problems.

That's the reason why I'm no longer updating the small sample app called Ride, which even wasn't meaned to grow to something as complex as ide.
I can of course release the code for study purposes, C#one is nicely coded, with readability in mind. However for further development thisone won't have a big role, I plan to use just parts from it like Settings manager, Update mechanism, may be some navigation algorithms, I don't know yet how exactly vs presents text in code editor to its extensions, that will decide if old algorithms can be reused or new should be written.

If you want to help in development of this Ride visualstudio extension, your help will be of course welcomed. smile
However we should get in touch in some more reliable way than through this forum, I'm not checking it every day, nor every week. big_smile
Of course it wasn't meaned as an attack against AG, I just wanted to say, that I am not always here.

There are still things to decide about Ride extension. For example what functionality to overtake and what keep to VS. Autocompletion for example is made very well imo and does not need any improvements on Ride level. On the other hand, VS has really really very very very stupid indenting algorithms, which are failing to do their job during writing of code. When you make them to reformat, that's okay, but during writing, it's horrible and unusable, when we want to rely on indentation with Ride. So I must find out how to wrap current algorithms in a way, that they will be used like in current Ride, but won't destroy other Vs functionality we want to keep.
Another thing is, that current ride is relying hardly on controlling the text by itself and on tabulators used as indenting characters. Both are problematic when other stuffs like autocompletion can change code under your fingers, plus tabulators are getting less and less popular, being replaced by spaces to indent code. It shouldn't be big problem to resolve them, but it's another point to look for.

Last thing, Ride is very useful when browsing xml code, but I personally don't like the practice to set indentation of ending tag the same as of beginning tag. Thus a xml formatting algorithm would be great, because xml formatting is bit different from code formatting, which Ride already provides.

I think that is all regarding next Ride development. if this gets done, it will be imo a really huge step forward of development accessibility. As I said, if you want to help, we can get in touch and discuss it more in detail.
I wanted to do this myself, but now I'm busy with another project, which fully takes my intelectual attention along with my nerves. big_smile
However when I'll be done, I should return here and finish this, once and forever, so development of anything will be much more confortable than before, doesn't matter if it is a game, text editor, a website in Django or a Neural network simulator.

Best regards

Rastislav