Please add a button into the editor toolbar to switch to your pluginview.

[Chris2011]

As you might know, there is the source and history button in the editor toolbar right above the file and sometimes the preview button, dependend from the file. So it would be great to have only one button for your plugin too to switch from source to the hex view.

Regards

Chris

[hajdam]

Hi. I was considering this option too, but disregarded that for now. I won't have much free time next few months and there are other tasks with higher priority I want to work on. Therefore I don't think I'll able to work on that any time soon.

I'm not sure how much work it would be. Maybe you could do it yourself as you have multiple plugins and much more experiences with NetBeans platform ;-)

[Chris2011]

Thx for the info. I will have a look, when I have time too ;). It should be easy, I think ^^.

[hajdam]

In release 0.2.7 there's added some basic support for this (multiview) via some ugly hacks and lots of pain. If you want to try it, it could be enabled in Options/Integration/Show binary multiview (experimental).

It's missing saving / synchronization when editor multiview tabs are switching, but it's probably as far as I'm willing to test this...

[Chris2011]

Thx, will check this out :)

[Chris2011]

It seems working, thx :). The problem here and this is not your fold, the multiview buttons become more and more and maybe we need another solution for this. Maybe adding it as a toggle to tb e editor bar. What do you think?

[hajdam]

Hi, I'm not sure I would expect some explosion of number of multiview editor buttons in the foreseeable future. On the other hand I don't consider looking into binary structure of a file such a typical use-case, that it would justify putting big button into every file editor toolbar either. Personally, I have my doubts about "History" button in multiview editor as well. Also file "Properties" is already available only via popup menu.

Not sure what kind of toggle in editor bar do you have on mind, but I agree something more modest could be better here. Not sure if there is an UX person for NetBeans we could ask or if it is a community decision or free reign for every committer at this point... Maybe we could make "Source" button as a dropdown split button with "Text" and "Binary" options and it would default to text or something like that.

Personally, I think for example solution in IntelliJ with "Editor / Split View / Preview" icons seems sufficient for most cases and makes it more user friendly than when I'm setting up multiview editor split in NetBeans, on the other hand, it makes it hard to support multiple editors, so binary editor is more like extra internal tool option there. Eclipse IDE allows to open multiple different editors of the same file at the same time which might be more universal, but seems to be a bit annoying to manually setup when opening a file.

It comes down to what concept is multiview meant for and how to best fit in that, I mean if it's even allowed to do any changes. I mean binary editing is kind of marginal activity in Java IDE, so probably better focus should be on case when multiple editors are available for single file, like for example XML, JSON, YAML, MarkDown, CSV and so on - you could probably have like "Source" (Text), "Table", "Tree", "Graph" depending on schema or have single "Preview" and allow additional options inside.

[Chris2011]

Hi, I'm not sure I would expect some explosion of number of multiview editor buttons in the foreseeable future. On the other hand I don't consider looking into binary structure of a file such a typical use-case, that it would justify putting big button into every file editor toolbar either. Personally, I have my doubts about "History" button in multiview editor as well. Also file "Properties" is already available only via popup menu.

We have minimum 2 buttons, always. It is source and history. Sometimes we have 3 buttons like source preview history. pom.xml atm is the only file who has 5 buttons. So yeah it will not explode but it will again add a new button and if we have others with another button and so on. So I see this point now, it is much to prominent and as you said it is a specific use case but not one for everytime.

Not sure what kind of toggle in editor bar do you have on mind, but I agree something more modest could be better here.

Just another button which fits here:

A toggle button with could look like this:

We don't have a UX person, I have a friend who I sometimes contact for this but really not very often. Maybe we can involve him for sure but also time limited. If you want, we can create a discussion section here to discuss this. Of course, this goes deeper in NB then in this plugin.

Personally, I think for example solution in IntelliJ with "Editor / Split View / Preview" icons seems sufficient for most cases and makes it more user friendly than when I'm setting up multiview editor split in NetBeans,

I'm with you, there you can have miore buttons like splitview that you dont have yet now. An icon button would be better but this I can't decide. The thing is that multiview is working like that. A different view can also have a different toolbar, which is totally fine.

[hajdam]

Btw. It's probably better to ask someone else, because I have kind of similar issue in my other project and I don't have anything close to a solution for it ;-)

[Chris2011]

Sure, I can try to ask him. My 2 cents, to have a source and a preview (and also a split view) is quite normal accross IDEs. It just differs from their implementation :)