Some Project window suggestions
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Good day!
I have the suggestions for a couple of improvements for the Project window.
First one: the find by name tool (aka files filter). It was already discussed some times, for example:
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/206/find-in-project-files
There was an advice to use Open File in Solution plug-in (I’m doing so now), but that was 4 years ago. Now we have this great Project window in the NPP itself, so it would be great if this tab supported filtering without external plug-ins.There are some ways to do it, covering less or more use-cases:
- Simplest one. Just plain match, show only files which name contains full pattern “as-is”.
- More complex: multi-word matching. Separates string by spaces and checks all non-empty sub-patterns. For example, pattern “func cpp” will match “functions.cpp” but neither “functions.h” nor “main.cpp”.
- The best: match with order and considering path. As previous one, but sub-patterns must exists in the full path to the file (from the root of the project) in the corresponding order. For example, “path lib func” will match “path/to/some/lib/functions.h” but not “another/library/path_functions.h” (because although “path” and “lib” both presented, the order is wrong).
Of course, we need new menu command that will activate and focus the pattern input control (to bind this command to hotkey and start filtering quickly) and when the filter is active up/down arrows iterate over results while Enter opens selected one (and I think closes filtering window and return structure to it’s normal state).
Another idea is the “track active tab” feature: when the user switches tab and file in the new tab is present in the project – the Project window scrolls to that file (opening intermediate folders if necessary) and selects it, so user can see easily where the file is in the project’s structure, and also can quickly open another file in the same folder.
Ideally there could be also an option in the Preferences, something like “collapse all but active” — the same as above, but before selecting new file ALL other folders are collapsing (so Project window always shows only the path from the root of the project to the file in the active tab). That would be great for really huge projects with deep folders tree, that does not fits the window’s height if not collapsed (front-enders must know that feel).
Hope my explanation is clear, but sorry for my not-very-well English. I’m ready to clarify any particular ideas if there would be an interest.
And thank you all for the great product, NPP is my favorite editor ever!
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You will need to follow the advice at the following link to have any hope for your suggestion to be seen by someone that can/will/might implement it: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/15741/faq-desk-feature-request-or-bug-report
