Favorite development environments?

[Nika Talaj]

I need to upgrade my LSL development environment.  Which IDE/plugins are your favorites?  The last thread I see about this is from 2021, and is quite short.

I don't suppose there are any whose syntax checking is updated as commands are added?

 

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

One of these threads?

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/495793-any-lsl-extensions-for-external-editor-up-to-date (10 replies)

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/32278-favorite-external-script-editors (33 replies)

Sublime Text 4 with Makopo's LSL extension is still my go-to, and it gets updated.

Visual Studio Code also has some extensions, but I can't say how good they are.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Quistess Alpha]

Honestly, as much as people like to complain about it, the built-in editor serves most of my needs, and if I need to do something mildly complicated to type (Idunno, a long list of vectors?) or offline, I generally use vim, which surprisingly, came with a (somewhat outdated) LSL syntax highlighting preinstalled. The only thing I find wanting is a quick lookup of argument order like you can get with a tooltip in the built-in editor.

[Frionil Fang]

Another vote for the built-in editor, guess my projects have never approached the complexity to require a separate program.

The only thing I miss sometimes is regex search/replace, but that's what I have notepad++ for, a little select all+copy+paste isn't that much of an inconvenience.

[Coffee Pancake]

VSCode.

 

[SeanMcDonald]

Yet another upvote for the builtin editor.  If I need an external, Kate is my go-to du jour.  It also comes with an LSL highlighter, which is handy for offline work.

[Love Zhaoying]

+1 for Built-in Editor. I've never used an external one.

That being said, my current project is morphing to where it may include it's OWN editor, with contextual highlighting, etc.

(Need to find the file that lists all the llFunctions() and their parameters so that I can consume it!)

 

[Bleuhazenfurfle]

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

(Need to find the file that lists all the llFunctions() and their parameters so that I can consume it!)

Do you mean https://github.com/Sei-Lisa/kwdb/blob/master/database/kwdb.xml perchance…?

[Hooten Haller]

As a Mac user I mostly use BBEdit now. Partly this is for a more responsive feel to editing, and familiar behavior. A major benefit is that every single save I make is saved to my local storage. I wrote a small app that manages the version history storage. So even if I get an accidental disconnect, or have to end editing suddenly with malformed LSL, or the inventory server glitches (which is frankly rare for me) I have a way to go back to old editions, compare changes, and even use git if I want to.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Hooten Haller

[PheebyKatz]

I have trouble understanding why people need/use "development environments" at all... Learning to use Dreamweaver took me longer than learning HTML and CSS, and just got in the way, while other people swear they couldn't do anything productive for web applications without it. LSL scripting is way simpler than all of that, and people still want more between themselves and the language. It seems counterintuitive to me.

I just use a simple text editor, and if it throws an error inworld it shows me where I left out the comma or semicolon.

Maybe this is similar to the mobile app thing; tools for non-nerds to nerd out with? Do these things really make scripting easier for you guys? I mean, like, easier than just learning LSL? I swear I'm not trying to be obtuse, I really just do not understand why people feel a need for such things. It seems similar to needing a special spoon holder to eat cereal, or something.

Edited June 30, 2023 by PheebyKatz

[Quistess Alpha]

31 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

Do these things really make scripting easier for you guys?

The main must haves:

• Syntax highlighting, or 'did I type 'rotataiton' instead of 'rotation' again?
• auto-indentation (pressing enter, the next line automatically has enough spaces on it to bring you to position)

Nice things:

• Tooltips (please remind me again what order the arguments to the llSetLinkTexture() function are, because they're different than the order used in llSLPPF( PRIM_TEXTURE ... ) )
• auto-complete (never really used this, but I can see it coming in handy?)

basically I just use it to catch really 'obvious' errors while I'm typing so I don't have to fix them in the compile stage as well.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

46 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

Do these things really make scripting easier for you guys? I mean, like, easier than just learning LSL? I swear I'm not trying to be obtuse, I really just do not understand why people feel a need for such things.

Most importantly, an external editor can give you a lot of shortcuts. If you know what you're about to write next, and the editor knows what you're about to write next, wouldn't it be so much nicer if the editor wrote it for you, so you can focus on the parts that matter?

• You don't have to remember the exact parameters needed for a function (everybody forgets sometimes)
• You can go to the next important spot with a single button press
• You can duplicate lines or move them up and down without having to highlight anything
• You can write code in multiple places at the same time
• Anytime you save the file in your editor, the script will automatically be saved in-world as well, no copypasting
• You don't lose your script if the viewer gets disconnected or crashes...

Edited June 30, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[PheebyKatz]

18 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

The main must haves:

• Syntax highlighting, or 'did I type 'rotataiton' instead of 'rotation' again?
• auto-indentation (pressing enter, the next line automatically has enough spaces on it to bring you to position)

Nice things:

• Tooltips (please remind me again what order the arguments to the llSetLinkTexture() function are, because they're different than the order used in llSLPPF( PRIM_TEXTURE ... ) )
• auto-complete (never really used this, but I can see it coming in handy?)

basically I just use it to catch really 'obvious' errors while I'm typing so I don't have to fix them in the compile stage as well.

You had me at auto-indentation, I get it now. So it's not like having to learn some program to get it to write it all for you, it's more like accessorizing a regular text editor. Bewilderment solved.

Thanks for clarifying that for me.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

You had me at auto-indentation, I get it now. So it's not like having to learn some program to get it to write it all for you, it's more like accessorizing a regular text editor. Bewilderment solved.

Thanks for clarifying that for me.

Similarly, my in-world script processor re-indents the code after the tokenizing step. Which could be annoying, but I don't save that output (yet), I just look at it and go oooh ahhh! 

Scripting is fun! 

[PheebyKatz]

8 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Similarly, my in-world script processor re-indents the code after the tokenizing step. Which could be annoying, but I don't save that output (yet), I just look at it and go oooh ahhh! 

Scripting is fun! 

Having to fix all the indents when I remove or add a segment is a major pain, so yeah, that sort of functionality is less of a crutch and more of a turbo-boooster.

[Quistess Alpha]

23 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

Having to fix all the indents when I remove or add a segment is a major pain, so yeah, that sort of functionality is less of a crutch and more of a turbo-boooster.

Yeah, funny enough the in-world editor lets you add indentation to a group of lines with highlight+tab, but I haven't figured out how to remove indentaiton with the in-world editor ( if I'm doing large restructuring like that, I'd probably be using vim anyway though)

[PheebyKatz]

9 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Yeah, funny enough the in-world editor lets you add indentation to a group of lines with highlight+tab, but I haven't figured out how to remove indentaiton with the in-world editor ( if I'm doing large restructuring like that, I'd probably be using vim anyway though)

I sometimes just strip tabs and start over, adding indents all the way down on my own. I don't mind the effort, and I actually like tedious tasks, but the time spent could be spent on better things than cleaning up whitespace. I won't even start up on people who indent all the way across the page when they don't have to. If I found something that just autocorrects it all on its own, I'd probably stick with it forever, like, open the file and it all straightens out. That'd make me go yay.

Edited June 30, 2023 by PheebyKatz

[Frionil Fang]

8 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

how to remove indentaiton with the in-world editor

Highlight+shift-tab

[Love Zhaoying]

29 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Yeah, funny enough the in-world editor lets you add indentation to a group of lines with highlight+tab, but I haven't figured out how to remove indentaiton with the in-world editor ( if I'm doing large restructuring like that, I'd probably be using vim anyway though)

Highlight + Shift-Tab..

[Innula Zenovka]

I find Sublime Text invaluable, primarily because of its formatting and  shortcuts and code completion it offers.   

I am, though, having a problem with Sublime Text 4 and Makopo's plug-in.    

I want to use K&R style for the formatting and my default Sublime Text colour scheme.   

However, Preferences>Package Settings>LSL/OSLSL always reverts to ""User Viewer Theme" every time I re-open Sublime Text and, although K&R Style remains checked, it doesn't seem to have any effect.  Neither does unchecking it.   

Anyone got any suggestions as to what's over-riding it? I've poked round and changed things were I can, but I'm getting nowhere.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

47 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I find Sublime Text invaluable, primarily because of its formatting and  shortcuts and code completion it offers.   

I am, though, having a problem with Sublime Text 4 and Makopo's plug-in.    

I want to use K&R style for the formatting and my default Sublime Text colour scheme.   

However, Preferences>Package Settings>LSL/OSLSL always reverts to ""User Viewer Theme" every time I re-open Sublime Text and, although K&R Style remains checked, it doesn't seem to have any effect.  Neither does unchecking it.   

Anyone got any suggestions as to what's over-riding it? I've poked round and changed things were I can, but I'm getting nowhere.

That package setting is saved in this file: %APPDATA%\roaming\sublime text\packages\user\lsl_settings_style.tmPreferences

For K&R style, you want the main part of the setting to look like this, with just a single space between the square-brackets of CDATA[]

<dict>
	<key>name</key>
	<string>LSL_SPACE_OR_NEWLINE</string>
	<key>value</key>
	<string><![CDATA[ ]]></string>
</dict>

If you turn off K&R style, the file would have a newline there instead:

<dict>
	<key>name</key>
	<string>LSL_SPACE_OR_NEWLINE</string>
	<key>value</key>
	<string><![CDATA[
]]></string>
</dict>

The "use viewer style" option just selects a premade color scheme.
That setting is also saved in a file: %APPDATA%\roaming\sublime text\packages\user\lsl.sublime-settings

Edited July 2, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator