A few suggestions for improving tools
Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 10:23 am
I have a few suggestions for how to improve on the tools feature of textpad, which with rather simple changes would make it possible to script textpad to a great extend, without having to embed a scripting engine directly into textpad.
First thing is to allow tools to return a textpad-macro (*.tpm), and then execute this when the tool ends. To begin with, the current binary tpm-format would suffice, but a text based format would of course make the process easier. A text based format would also satisfy the previous requests for a macro editor, since one could edit the file (Or even write an application for it).
A further improvement of tools could be, to allow sending the current (unsaved) document to the tool. This could be done relatively simple, by saving to a temporary file, and send this filename as an argument. Sending the data over stdinput would be even cooler, but not strictly necessary.
Sending the carret position in the document would be rather helpful aswell, especially in combination with the above feat.
As far as I can make out, these changes must be rather simple to implement, and would greatly improve the options for customising textpad. This would allow users to write external tools, that could take on some of the features which are now being requested for the textpad application.
First thing is to allow tools to return a textpad-macro (*.tpm), and then execute this when the tool ends. To begin with, the current binary tpm-format would suffice, but a text based format would of course make the process easier. A text based format would also satisfy the previous requests for a macro editor, since one could edit the file (Or even write an application for it).
A further improvement of tools could be, to allow sending the current (unsaved) document to the tool. This could be done relatively simple, by saving to a temporary file, and send this filename as an argument. Sending the data over stdinput would be even cooler, but not strictly necessary.
Sending the carret position in the document would be rather helpful aswell, especially in combination with the above feat.
As far as I can make out, these changes must be rather simple to implement, and would greatly improve the options for customising textpad. This would allow users to write external tools, that could take on some of the features which are now being requested for the textpad application.