Does anyone need code beautifier / formatter?

[monoa]

Yes for CSS. There are two features from TopStyle that stop me switching to WeBuilder - CSS 'Style Sweeper' and 'Palette Editor'. Add those and you've got a new customer.

[endelo]

I tend to not like code formatters.. i have some pretty strange quirks about formatting code. sometimes the "right" method of formatting and indentation doesn't look as good. I much prefer to format the code the way I want it.

I could be mistaken, but isn't it the code beautifier's intention to allow you to set your own custom rules on its markup cleaning? I suppose custom rules would make or break this feature for me.

[Dennis]

It would be great if you add the feature for css browser compatibility check, like Monoa said.

Regards,

Dennis

[moroandrea]

This could be useful. Please add an option to allow user to specify how tab should be considered. If just as tab or as a space like happen today while pressing tab while editing a doc.

Also quote the monoa. Request. I currently use TopStyle and for some aspects it's better than WeBuilder.

Andrea

[syrupcore]

I realized last night that what I'd probably use more is a code 'uglierizer'. That is, I'd love to have some sort of code compression option built into webuilder. of course, the trick is that I want to be able to edit in my normal, cleanly tabbed version and then save as compressed. I don't know if this is even possible without additional files (which I wouldn't mind at all, personally).

there are a ton of Open Source ones around but I, obviously, I have no idea what could actually work within webuilder. I know that dean edward's compressor is well praised these days: http://dean.edwards.name/download/#packer

Will

[kybos]

I would be happy to have a good HTML (and also php) formatter.

No editor/tool I have seen as yet had a really useful formatter.

Tidy is quite useless because of its handling of comments and other issues.
Dreamweaver is configurable to some extent but if you want to use blank lines for readable coding - bad luck as well.

Best thing so far was the indentation function of Ultraedit, but then you have to be careful to 'preformat' the coding so the indentation works correctly.

Obviously my expectations are too high for 21st century...

[Gorky]

Hello Karlis,

ever thought in embed the opensource cssbeautifier and - optimizer csstidy http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/ into webuilder? (csstidy is only a commandline tool)

regards

Gorky

[jb2386]

Hi There!

I'm glad you ask your customers about such features.

I haven't yet purchased Rapid PHP, but I am looking into it.

I can tell you, if it had the code beautifier, I'd buy it on the spot. Its really the main feature I'm looking for in a PHP IDE. Zend has a good one, but its in java and is slow and feels bulky. Rapid PHP seems like a great editor, and the fact its not in Java like most other PHP IDE's means its A LOT faster.

At the moment I use editplus, and its a hassle to maintain code in the same format (though I do try, but pressing a command to have it done would be great!)

[drjee]

Hi

an HTML code formater/beautifier would be great. And have you ever thought about a code transformer (expect from tidy) which offers automatic code transformation? That would be good to have.

cheers, drjee

[s1tony]

While a decent code formatter would be nice, I would rather see other feature requests implemented first:

- Improved Code Folding (I see by other forum entries, this is in the works and I agree with many others this feature is very helpful, increases productivity and decreases irritation (especially when debugging code).

- At least some support for Smarty templates (.tpl files). Creating a document type and including the Smarty help file would be a good start.

- Add some features to Projects
-- Ability to add reference to (or include) libraries, such as PEAR, Smarty
or even personal libraries. Then, have Intellisense pre-parse these
libraries.

-- Ability to group projects (perhaps create a Solution concept). This can
be useful for a project where the files are not all being published to the
same root directory.

I have been evaluating WeBuilder, along with three other PHP IDEs over the last week or so, and WeBuilder and NuSphere are my favorites so far.
With some of these additional features implemented, along with the favorable difference in price compared to NuSpere, WeBuilder could be a really good choice.

[fuzzylogic]

How about another survey?

In the new survey you also ask people to indicate their level of experience as a programmer.

I strongly suspect that the more time someone has spent writing code that the less interested they are in a beautifier.

I am content to do my own formatting. But I can see some uses for it. for instance if I am looking at someone elses code I would probably like to be able to reformat it. It would also be useful for a company with a team of programmers and they would like everybody to use a consistent style.

The thing that you are going to be up against is that -- as evidenced here -- there is a huge variation between people and the styles that they prefer to have.

for instance I started out writing code like this

if (foo){
code
} else {
code
}

-----

but after awhile decided it was too visually confusing so changed my style to this.

if (foo)
{
code
}
else
{
code
}


--------------------

other peoples code I have seen seem to be split about 50/50 on how to layout the brackets.

I agree with other people's comments that this is not real high on my priority list, there are other things which I think are more important. Of course, once again, everybody has a different idea about what is more important to them.

[xzab]

YES! This would be a great feature! Can it be activated by hotkey?

btw, I meant to vote for "all languages" but i accidentally voted for html

[chen]

For me formatting is important, the tidy in WB gives me only headaches, then I use APTANA that has a nice formater where you can define your own style.

[Manko10]

I don't need a code beautifier for my own codes cause I write coding standard compliant code but when I have to maintain other code that's written by coders who don't know what readable code means, such a tool would be a useful feature but only if it's highly customizable.

[auvi1]

Yes, beautifie the thing... Most people are attracted by the looks, probably this will generate more sales and this is a good thing. or not?