[wp-hackers] GSoC 2013: Application Idea - Making the Code Editor Usable

[ohad raz]

my plugin already does most of what you are suggesting.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-code-editor/




On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Corey Alexander <coreyja at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey WordPress team,
>
> I'm Corey Alexander. I'm a CS major at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology.
> I have been doing web work, mostly in WordPress, for the last 3 years or so
> now. If you want to check out some of the projects I've worked on, I have
> done most of my work as part of Mad Lab MG, and I have worked on almost
> every project that is listed on the Mad Lab
> Portfolio<http://www.madlabmg.com/portfolio/>
> .
>
> If this email is a duplicate, I apologize. Had a problem with sending to
> the list from an email that wasn't subscribed so sending from my main one
> this time.
>
> Most of the rest of this email is going to be copied and only slightly
> modified from the blog post I wrote on my application idea. If you want to
> read it there, it is located at
>
> http://coreyja.com/gsoc-2013-make-the-theme-and-plugin-editor-in-wordpress-usable/
> .
>
> Here is my idea:
>
> The project I want to work on isn't one of the ones that is listed on the
> ideas page, but is one that I have ran into when I've been developing in
> WordPress quite a bit. Currently I hate doing any development, or even
> reading code, using WordPress’s built in code editor. There are times when
> I am helping someone else out quick and I can’t get FTP access, or just
> have to fix something quick. In both of these cases I would like to be able
> to use the built in editor. But currently the built in editor’s usability
> is so low I do whatever I can to get FTP access and avoid this editor at
> all costs.
>
>
>
> Some of my biggest gripes with it currently are:
>
>    - The tab key doesn’t work. Un-indented code is really ugly and harder
>    to maintain.
>    - Multiple browser tabs to look at multiple different files. A tabbed
>    editor to have multiple files open at once would be a huge improvement.
>    - Only can view files in the top level folder. Can’t edit CSS files in
>    the CSS folder, or JS in the JS folder for example. So following good
>    standards for code management leads to not being able to edit these
> files
>    using the built in editor.
>
>
>
> These are all things that I want to fix in the editor. This will make it
> more usable and an actual tool, instead of the annoyance I currently view
> it as. Besides these I also want to add some other features, most are
> things that would make development easier, but aren’t as necessary as the
> one’s I listed above.
>
>    - Code Coloring. This is probably the most important of these features.
>    Code coloring makes reading code orders of magnitude easier, and is
>    something I would really love to see in the editor.
>    - The bare minimum files that should be editable and highlighted are
>    PHP, CSS and JS. It would be great if these could be expanded to
>    CoffeeScript, LESS, SCSS and some of the other derived file types.
>    - Ability to download a zip of the entire theme or plugin. Makes back up
>    easier
>    - Allow uploading of either individual file, or a big zip that would
>    simply update the files that are currently there for that plugin or
> theme
>
>
>
> I don’t have a timeline in mind yet for the development process, but I
> wanted to get some feedback from the WordPress core team to see if there
> you guys think this is a project that would work well for a GSoC project.
> If so, is there someone who would like to be my mentor for it? Either leave
> a comment on the blog page I linked above or shoot me and email at
> corey at coreyja.com to give me some feedback on this project or chat about
> it. Thanks everyone!
>
> --Corey A.
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>



-- 
Ohad Raz,
WordPress Consultant <http://en.bainternet.info/> | WordPress
Developer<http://en.bainternet.info/>| WordPress
Freelancer <http://en.bainternet.info/>