Thanks for your feedbacks.
We're committed to provide the best tool and continuously improve Camino. We're currently working hard on the next version. Unfortunately, as usual, the size of the 'wishlist' is bigger than the capacity of our resource. We have to painfully leave out some of the features/ideas till future releases.
Please see intermixed reply below.
At 06:03 pm 07-03-2002 -0800, you wrote:
I've been using Camino since the early betas and have only just joined the mailing list. I appologize if what I am about to write is a repeat.
(I use Camino 1.0.1 under Debian GNU/Linux (unstable) and run linux 2.4.18)
Suggestions/feature requests (in no particular order)
* Camino should have a list of recent projects in the File menu. I find it a pain in the *** to have to wade through the file dialog to open my project.
Yes, this feature will be in the next version.
* I would also like to see an option for Camino to automatically open the last project upon startup.
This is a good idea. We'll consider this.
* Bug? I have to use the IBM 1.3 JVM because Camino hangs randomly (using 100% of the CPU) when I use any of the Blackdown 1.3.* JVMs.
Does Camino generates any error message in the log file (camino.log)?
Camino has been tested on both Sun's JVM and IBM's JVM, but not on Blackdown. Have you experienced similar problem when running other Swing applications on Blackdown? (Together or JBuilder won't be a good gauge as they use their own copy of JVM.)
* Sort the items in the left pane's tree. My projects are getting to have *many* jsp's per directory and it becomes hard to find specific ones.
Camino should sort the JSPs and the Actions. If you don't see the files are sorted, it will be a bug. Could you double check and confirm this? Thanks.
* Remember the layout of the panes.
* Remember window size and position.
We'll consider these.
* When there are parse errors, those errors should be put right in my face. I don't know how many times I've wasted many minutes trying to figure out why some of my jsp's didn't show up! (This is also related to the sorting request above... It would have been easier to see that a jsp simply wasn't in the list...) One suggestion I have would be to put up a dialog when there are parse errors.
Do you mean to display a dialog after all the JSPs are processed or each time when a JSP has parse error?
When it was in beta, Camino displayed a dialog and stopped parsing the rest of the files if it hit a parse error. However, based on the beta-testers' feedback, we were convinced it's more convenience to accumulate all the parser errors and display them in the message view after all the files are processed.
Do you think it is helpful to display a "broken" icon next to the problematic JSP or mark the JSP red in the left tree pane?
* I generally don't care about the warnings displayed in the bottom pane. (The Camino JSP parser can't handle my obviously hiddeous website structure with more custom tags than you can believe!)
What warning messages are they? Do you mean those problems caused by <%@ include %> you mentioned below?
* (bug?) The jsp parser doesn't deal with <%@include ....%> stuff... This causes most of my warnings since my taglib defs are all in an include file.
Currently Camino doesn't perform server-side inclusion. It's unlikely the next version will support this.
* Grouping/Collapsing of related objects. What I would like to see is something similar to UML's packages, where you can look at things at a higher level without all the boring details. As the app using struts grows, there simply isn't enough screen space to keep everything visible and scrolling to what you're working on is not ideal. Ask me if I need to ellaborate on this.
(See below)
* Take a look at TogetherJ and try out their auto-layout tool. That's what Camino needs! (I always knew that that stupid graph theory course in college was going to pay off some time! :-)) The layout engine should group things and make every effort to not cross vectors.
The next version of Camino will have multiple Storyboards for the multi sub-app feature in Struts 1.1. This will help in managing large project in a team env.
Besides, we are considering the following features:
- Grouping of objects on the Storyboard so that they can be shown/hidden/grey-out together. (Is this what you have in mind?)
- Zooming of the Storyboard.
* I *really* need an undo/redo facility for the layout stuff! I already spend way too much time trying to make things fit.
This is on our feature request list. However, it's unlikely it will be in the next version.
* Wizard or multi-page form support: For what we're doing, most of the web UI will consist of the equivalent of wizards. This means that forms generally have a Back and Next button. The way I do this now is by manually creating the form classes to include all the possible data. It would be nice to have Camino create these more complicated form classes.
How do you see Camino works? Could you elaborate? A use case or scenario will help.
* Automatic updates: why let Camino examine the source tree and watch for changed files and then automatically incorporate those in the model? This would save me a lot of Project|Reload clicks! You could do what TogetherJ does and only do this when it regains mouse focus or is moved to the foreground.
Yes, this will be in the next version.
* Visual indicator that something has been changed and that therefore the project needs saving. I've never seen the status bar used for anything...
Yes, this will be in the next version.
* When reloading, please don't collapse the tree in the left pane! Just update it. With the level of subdirectories we have, this collapsing is a real pain.
With the 'auto updates' feature in place (see above), Camino will be able to detect change in directory and update only a sub-directory. I think the tree 'collapsing' won't be a serious inconvenience any more. What do you think?
Nevertheless, we'll investigate into it.
Ok, that's all I can think of right now. Keep up the good work!
Once again. We appreciate very much your feedbacks.
Keep them coming! :)
P.S.: For those wondering.... Yes I absolutely love TogetherJ from TogetherSoft. Unfortunately, we can't afford (yet) it at my current gig.
Yes, Together is a good tool.
--
Andrew Scherpbier, CTO ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
BlackBall Music (http://www.blackballmusic.com/)
John Yu Scioworks Technologies
e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: +(65) 873 5989
w: http://www.scioworks.com m: +(65) 9782 9610
Scioworks Camino - "Rapid WebApp Assembly for Struts"
