Outline view - custom lists/patterns?

pochmann wrote on Tue Jan 15 15:38:46 CET 2008:

I'm working on a software with huge scripts and I'd like to see certain
patterns listed in the outline view, similar to the subs. So for each occurence
of something like

  if ( $action eq 'foo' )

I'd like to see 'foo' listed in an 'Actions' list in the outline view. So
I'd like to just enter a name (e.g. 'Actions') and a regular expression
to find the occurences. I've seen other people asking for similar things,
and this seems to be of so general interest and rather easy to do that I'm
hoping this is supported already without me writing EPIC or Eclipse code.
Is it?

Thanks,
Stefan Pochmann

jploski wrote on Wed Jan 16 00:15:12 CET 2008:

No, it's not supported. Also, I don't recall anyone having asked for such
a feature (there was a request for making variables visible in the outline,
though).

pochmann wrote on Wed Jan 16 11:11:35 CET 2008:

Yes, I had seen that other request here. I've seen more people ask for it
when googling for "custom outline" and "eclipse", not necessarily only EPIC
users. But as far as I understand, the outline view is strongly coupled
with the editor, so I figured for using EPIC, I'd ask here.

If there's another way to get this done in Eclipse (doesn't need to be in
the outline view), I'd still be very interested.

I've read some articles and some EPIC source code and it seems to be harder
than I hoped. Not because of the task itself but because I'd have to get
familiar with a lot of code first. I'll probably ask my boss to allow me
marking the locations with empty subs (e.g. sub ActionFoo {}) because right
now it drives me crazy. This is far from perfect but it'll ease the pain.

jploski wrote on Wed Jan 16 18:37:58 CET 2008:

Have you considered using bookmarks (set manually) - or does it have to
be automatic?
Have you considered using custom TODO markers (also set manually, and it
currently works only for # comments)?

Both solutions sound better than empty subs, but they involve manual marking.

Maybe the TODO markers code could be extended to optionally also support
matching outside of comments. Would you need multi-line matching or would
the regex be limited to a single line?

pochmann wrote on Sun Jan 20 20:34:09 CET 2008:

I haven't tried bookmarks yet, but the TODO markers look very good. There's
actually already a comment starting with "# Action ..." above many of the
"if ..." lines, and standardizing that comment would be beneficial anyway.
I think it is perfect for my problem. Me asking for regex matching was just
what I thought would be the most obvious because of its generality, but
I don't really need it. Thanks a lot!

pochmann wrote on Sun Jan 20 21:28:16 CET 2008:

Correction: I also asked for regex matching in order to cut out only the
name of the action and not show the code around it. The tasks/TODOs do that
alright anyway.

Question about the tasks view: It doesn't just show the tasks of the one
file I'm viewing but of all I've opened so far. It gets messy quickly. Can
I make it show only the tasks in the one currently viewed file (i.e. like
the outline view)? I've tried the preferences and filters but didn't find
anything.

Bookmarks btw aren't good for me as they're apparently not stored in-place
and some people here might use other IDEs and thus I guess bookmarks would
get lost in between.

(and sorry for the previous out-of-line reply)

jploski wrote on Sun Jan 20 21:47:25 CET 2008:

Click on the "Configure filters" icon in the Tasks view.