Then this last week, there was a UT thread that had to do with adding objects to columns, and I learned that there were other good suggestions on how to do this, but not using the Class Browser. (I learned that you can do so by first selecting an object already in the column, and then dragging onto that column creates a sibling. -- but this seems quite cumbersome, and difficult to remember.)
Since I already had visited that same code and plunked it into PEM Editor, I took a look at it and found that there was an easy fix to allow dropping objects into a grid column. Very easy in fact -- modifying exactly one line of code to include 'column' in the same list as 'container' and 'page'.
And this was enough to whet my appetite.
I have now made a few modifications to my own copy of the Class Browser:
- Problem with not being able to drag/drop objects into a column has been resolved.
- You can now drag an object onto the PEM Editor form, and the object will be added as a child or sibling of the currently selected object as displayed in the PEM Editor form. This means you can select a column in a grid, or possibly a container that is obscured by other objects, and be able to safely drag/drop. (You can drop it anywhere on the PEM Editor form.)
- The object dropped onto the form is now selected in both the Property Window and PEM Editor.
- Classes that are opened (double-clicking) now use (if available) the standard code available thru Thor for opening files. See Managing MRU lists and Source Code Control.
I've been thinking about what else I might be able to accomplish. (I like tinkering, this is how PEM Editor started). So, some ideas:
- I find the organization of the TreeView to be all a jumble, not taking advantage of all that TreeViews offer. I think that having root nodes that are the baseclasses, so that all the classes with the same baseclass would be grouped, would be a vast improvement.
- Unless I have it wrong, there does not seem to be a way to include all the classes in a project. I would think that would be highly desirable. (Apparently, adding a project adds ALL the files. No doubt there is (was?) good reason for this, but I would think that in a class browser there should be some way to show just the classes.)
- I am seeing an occasional bug where the icon for some nodes is not shown. I'd like to fix that.
- Is there really no way to drag a class directly from the TreeView node, without having to resort to using that obscure icon?