[Lazarus] New experimantal beta feature - View same source in multiple Windows

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Martin schrieb:

> Compiling Lazarus (SVN / Snapshot) with   -dSynDualView  allows you to 
> open a 2nd window for any open source file. The 2nd Window can be 
> edited, and all edits made in one window, are also done in the other 
> window (they edit the same source).

Very nice, have to try out immediately! :-)

I get an error: uemOpenAnotherView not defined, in sourceeditor.pp?


> => All this is not likely to be fixed soon => the idea is to wait what 
> happens to IDE docking

Why wait? When we fix the details now, I know what to implement for docking.

See the MasterSite example for my current suggestion:

Every IDE window can become an elastic dock site, with added dock panels 
at the left, right and/or bottom, by calling AddElasticSites(). My plan 
is to make the editor windows such dock sites, but also the main bar can 
be configured in the same way. This is optional eye candy, can be 
replaced by the next option:

All (other) dockable forms are wrapped into floating forms with a 
DockManager, from which they can be docked together or into the elastic 
sites of another window. Empty floating host sites (after undocking 
their client) destroy themselves. Dockable forms are created by 
TDockMaster.CreateDockable, and can be configured further by the caller.

Please note that the MakeSite example is not yet finished, emptied 
notebook do not yet disappear - this will be cured in the next update.

It would be nice to have any number of editor windows, creatable on 
demand (your part).


Persistence of the layout has to be defined. All dock sites can be 
enumerated, and can store their coordinates, layouts and content. The 
restauration of an layout is just unclear, with regards to the 
recreation of the docked forms. We'll have to find a solution for 
multi-instance forms, like editor windows, and for re-creating the 
docked forms by their name and instance number, instead of their ID.

My current plan is to use the form name to specify the form type (class 
name) to create, e.g. TMessageWindow for MessageWindow or MessageWindow1 
(see TDockMaster.CreateDockable). The instance number can be removed 
from the form name for all single-instance forms, to distinguish them 
from true multi-instance forms. This will prevent the creation of new 
instances, when a single-instance form already has been created. Every 
form must know whether it's single or multi instance, and change its 
name accordingly when it's created. Multi-instance forms can be 
connected by their instance number, e.g. CodeExplorer2 will reflect the 
current file in SourceEditor2. The layout configuration file will have 
to be modified, to contain the form instance names instead of unique 
form IDs, with multiple instance entries.

The anchor docking and its manager is no more required, and can be 
replaced by the TEasyDockSite and TDockMaster classes. Or the 
TDockMaster methods can be integrated into the existing layout manager.

DoDi