Missing refresh after "Trim trailing whitespace"

[chrroe]

Hi!

I've defined a new file format in build 445 for my internal *.pkglist files. Within that definition I checked Trim trailing whitespaces (When saving) on the Conversion tab.
This seems to work fine: When I save a file via the blue Save File button in file-viewer it strips the whitespaces, but only while writing to disc. On the screen you can still see them!
If you now use the orange Reload Files button the file is displayed correctly.

IMHO a kind of automatic refresh is missing after saving such a file ...


Bye
Christoph

[Chris]

Christoph,

Thank you for pointing this out. I will add it to our list to be fixed.

[Tim]

The problem with automatically reloading the files is that you'd lose undo after save and any manual alignments. The current feature is strictly a post-editor operation, on par with an external conversion that runs on saving.

I agree that some users will consider this a flaw, even though it's working as designed, so we'll consider alternatives. We've discussed having conversion commands in the editor, eg an undoable Trim Trailing Whitespace command. Wherever a line was trimmed you'd have a yellow changebar. Perhaps the "when saving" feature would automatically issue the editor command before saving (resulting in green changebars on trimmed lines). If you issue an Undo command immediately after the save, it may be confusing. (It may or may not undo the last manual edit, depending on whether there were trimmed lines.)

[Michael Bulgrien]

Many editors have options to manipulate text in a selection during your edit session. Select a block of text then: trim white space; convert tabs to spaces; spaces to tabs; change to upper, lower or mixed case, etc.

A new "Format" menu with these types of options would allow a user to do these types of formatting changes without having to rely on a save/reload.

[Tim]

Yes, that's exactly what we're looking at. But it's also nice to have the When Saving feature to enforce a standard without relying on manual edits.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Perhaps the "when saving" feature would automatically issue the editor command before saving (resulting in green changebars on trimmed lines). If you issue an Undo command immediately after the save, it may be confusing.

Actually, I think this would work well. Is there a reason why you don't place the Undo/Redo buttons on the Edit toolbar by default? If they were there, the Undo hint would say "Undo Trim Trailing Whitespace" which would offset any potential confusion. If a user doesn't check and doesn't know what was "undone", they could hover over the Redo button to see what the hint says...