From delphitech at yahoo.com Tue Jan 27 21:05:08 2009 From: delphitech at yahoo.com (DJ) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:05:08 -0600 Subject: [regex-coach] Couple minor feature suggestions Message-ID: <11818370.20090127150508@yahoo.com> Hi Regex-coach, The example on, "http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/tutorial18.html", and the Regex Coach Step feature have been helpful, especially in understanding backtracking. I have a couple minor feature suggestions. 1) Step Tab Keep track of and display the number of times the "Next Step" button is clicked, and append it to the message, like: 19) Sub-match from 2 to 3 2) Info Tab At first glance I thought regex-coach Info pane didn't explain lookahead/lookbehind because of the message, "The selection is invalid", but then I extended the selection. The regular expression I used was, "(?<=\d)(?=(\d\d\d)+(?!\d))". Perhaps the text could provide a suggestion, like: "Did you mean "(?<=\d)"", when a user selects an incomplete expression like "?<=". When I selected "?:" or "(?:[a]*b|a+ac)", in "(?:[a]*b|a+ac)y", no additional information was provided in the Info Pane for the Group No Capture. Although the Control Tab does represent that, it would be nice if it were reflected in the Info pane too. 3) File menu Add a Clear menu item that would clear the current contents of the Regular expression pane and the Target string pane. If not Clear, maybe Reset or New. File | Clear (Alt+C) maybe? Or File | Clear | Both (Alt+C) File | Clear | Regular expression pane File | Clear | Target string pane 4) File menu Rather than relying on which pane has the focus, add a specific submenu to "File | Insert File" to position the text, like: File | Insert File | Regular expression pane File | Insert File | Target string pane Maybe extend this to Save too. File | Save | Both File | Save | Regular expression pane File | Save | Target string pane Very nice. I haven't touched LISP since my college days (I still have my "Learning LISP" handbook :-) and it was fun to see it used. Thank you. -- __________________________ DJ From delphitech at yahoo.com Wed Jan 28 00:52:24 2009 From: delphitech at yahoo.com (DJ) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:52:24 -0600 Subject: [regex-coach] Couple more minor feature suggestions Message-ID: <1539888834.20090127185224@yahoo.com> Hi Regex-coach, A couple more "minor" feature suggestions. 1) Step Tab Add a "Previous step" button. 2) Step Tab Add logging. Perhaps a "Log" pane that could be saved, or at least cut/paste. 3) Help | Documentation When I clicked Help | Documentation nothing occurred. I thought it might just take the user to the web Quick Start Tutorial. 4) Step Tab At some point I must have selected the regular expression in the Step tab Regular expression pane at the bottom. When selected the background is grey. When I then clicked on the "Next Step" button, the helpful red background coloring wasn't appearing in the Step tab Regular expression pane to indicate the regex position. The same thing happens if the user (me :-)) selects the text in the Step tab Target string pane. The yellow/grey coloring doesn't appear. I might have used the mouse as I was thinking about things, and that is when the selection occurred. I couldn't figure out why the red/yellow/grey highlighting wasn't working :-) when I was clicking the Start and Next buttons. Maybe when the user clicks on the "Start" button remove all the selections (i.e., the text background is white) in both Step panes. Environment: Win/XP and Regex Coach 0.9.2 Thank you. -- __________________________ DJ From jp at jpsdomain.org Wed Jan 28 01:48:22 2009 From: jp at jpsdomain.org (JP Vossen) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:48:22 -0500 Subject: [regex-coach] Couple minor feature suggestions In-Reply-To: <11818370.20090127150508@yahoo.com> References: <11818370.20090127150508@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <497FB966.6050704@jpsdomain.org> DJ wrote: > 3) File menu > Add a Clear menu item that would clear the current contents of the > Regular expression pane and the Target string pane. If not Clear, > maybe Reset or New. > > File | Clear (Alt+C) maybe? > Or > File | Clear | Both (Alt+C) > File | Clear | Regular expression pane > File | Clear | Target string pane I'd prefer a "clear on exit" feature, to prevent potential information leaks (sometimes my patterns contain customer names and such). I asked about that a year or three ago and don't recall what happened. Not a big deal, but I thought I'd mention that since it kind of came up again. Nice ideas, JP ----------------------------|:::======|------------------------------- JP Vossen, CISSP |:::======| http://bashcookbook.com/ My Account, My Opinions |=========| http://www.jpsdomain.org/ ----------------------------|=========|------------------------------- "Microsoft Tax" = the additional hardware & yearly fees for the add-on software required to protect Windows from its own poorly designed and implemented self, while the overhead incidentally flattens Moore's Law. From edi at agharta.de Wed Jan 28 10:54:38 2009 From: edi at agharta.de (Edi Weitz) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:54:38 -0500 Subject: [regex-coach] Couple more minor feature suggestions In-Reply-To: <1539888834.20090127185224@yahoo.com> References: <1539888834.20090127185224@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 7:52 PM, DJ wrote: > A couple more "minor" feature suggestions. Thanks for the useful suggestions. I'll add them to my list of things that should be done. Right now, the development of the Regex Coach is kind of frozen as I'm too busy with paid work, but there's always a chance I'll pick it up again in the near future. Cheers, Edi.