http://forums.ngedit.com/viewtopic.php?id=44

[ EDIT: The official release is now available as described here: http://forums.ngedit.com/viewtopic.php?id=45 ]

In the past, I've asked the developers from Microsoft for a way to detect whether there is an Intellisense dropdown on display. I haven't been successful in obtaining an answer (and there isn't a documented way). I will ask them again and see whether I can get some way to detect the condition.

Thanks!

Would it be possible to have viemu ignore the first 'esc' if there is an intellisense popup? Right now if you want to type something that is not in intellisense and hit 'esc' you have to hit 'i' to get back to editing. If possible, then I'd suppose it'd certainly be a user preference thing...

thanks, nathan

For some reason that isn't clear to me, it seems this doesn't work reliably. I don't use VAX myself, so I only tested when I initially tried to address the compatibility problems.

I will try to get in touch with them directly and see if they can be of help - if they could point out exactly when they subclass the window, I could try to ensure I always do it afterwards. I'll let you know what comes up.

With regards to other features such as vi keybindings in their autocompletion window... I can't even know when it's been shown. Actually, not VS's own Intellisense let me know whether it's active...

As always, I'm amazed by the randomness of the Visual Assist interaction problems. That only makes them more annoying and harder to fix.

I like both tools, ViEmu and Visual Assist X but yes, the randomness of the interaction problems can be very annoying.

I had some thoughts, don't know if they are possible or not.

A lot of my annoyances with Visual Assist X and ViEmu could be solved by ViEmu turning off Visual Assist X's 'Autotext' feature when ViEmu is in command mode.  Not all of Visual Assist X, just the Text Editor -> Suggestions...  Without changes to Visual Assist X that's probably not possible though.  I doubt that sending a message to set that control would work as it's the typical windows thing of the options dialog not being live, it requires an apply and or ok to take effect.

Most of my other thoughts involved minor changes to Visual Assist X to make it behave better.   I posted them to the Visual Assist X suggestions forum.  e.g. A minimum number of characters to type before suggestions kicks in.  When I am using h, j, k, l to navigate in ViEmu command mode or use a, o, i to enter edit mode, I really don't want those keys to be used as the basis of a suggestion, hence the turning it off in ViEmu command mode and turning it back on in text entry mode.  But to me, probably as a Vi user who hates the arrow keys, a single character will hardly ever produce a useful suggestion so when I use the suggestions, which I do a lot, I type until it's disambiguated and I never go to the arrow keys.  Hmmm... now if Visual Assist X had it's own vi mode for navigating the list box by hitting escape (in stead of escape dismissing the box) that would be kind of nifty.

Another suggestion I had for Visual Assist X involved the 'Autotext' editing.  If they just had the option to have an Autotext thing completely override any suggestions instead of complementing them and having them cabable of producing no suggestion list that would solve my single key press suggestions being annoying and producing useless suggestions issue as well.

Anyway, most of this is really for Visual Assist X and not ViEmu but I thought I'd post here as well.

Sure, download the following file:

  http://www.viemu.com/DXViEmuCompat.dll [Update May 25: the link was broken!]

and copy it into your DXCore plugins directory (typically c:\Program Files\Developer Express Inc\DXCore for Visual Studio .NET\1.1.\Bin\Plugins). You need to have ViEmu version 1.4.5-alpha-4 or later - the latest one is the following one:

  http://www.viemu.com/ViEmu145a7.msi

Which also fixes the cursor position after the :d command (you need to manually uninstall your current version of ViEmu before installing this one).

The net effect is that ViEmu will enter insert mode automatically when you use one of the CodeRush commands that enters "llinked identifier editing".

As always, I'm amazed by the randomness of the Visual Assist interaction problems. That only makes them more annoying and harder to fix.

BTW, the DevExpress people were very helpful in fixing the interaction, supplying a DXCore plugin skeleton from which I could detect the event. The customer who originally notified the problem also hacked it a bit until the behavior was perfect. All in all, a satisfying experience.

I am always interested fixes for CodeRush stuff (my manager spends a lot of time reporting bugs to them and talking to the dev team over their), so I'd like to get my hands on it if possible.

By the way, there is one problem with ViEmu<>CodeRush, which I managed to provide a fix for last week or so (with the help of the customer who was experiencing it and the nice guys from DevExpress). It deals with automatically entering insert mode when using the inline variable rename refactoring method in CodeRush, and consists in a DXCore plugin that has to be installed in their plugins directory. Let me know if you're interested, as I haven't gotten around to making it available publicly.

After disabling a few features to stop it from clashing with DevExpress setup (which works perfectly with ViEmu BTW as long as you have nothing bound to Esc in their shortcuts menu), I noticed that Visual Assist is swallowing my escapes also -- which is a shame, because I really like the extended syntax highliting features - finally I can make everything look like 'elflord'!

Anyway, just thought I'd add my 0.02c.

I'll have a look at the Escape-swallowing problem. It shouldn't happen, and as far as I've noticed, it does not happen for me. Could you list which VS version you are using, and what (if any) other 3rd party plugins are installed?

I use VS2005 with Visual Assist X 2005.11.25. True, the problem only occurs with Visual Assist enabled. But I've become pretty happy with Visual Assist, so I hope it can be made to work.

I'll try to reproduce & fix it. ViEmu already goes to great lengths to be as Visual Assist compatible as (humanly) possible. I won't go into the nasty details. Thanks for reporting that the problem is due to an interaction with VAX. I'll let you know as soon as something is ready.

Thanks for the suggestions and for the detailed rationale behind them.

You're most welcome. :-)

Great!

As long as I can get it to work like I want, e.g., via a user setting, I'm perfectly satisfied.

I use VS2005 with Visual Assist X 2005.11.25. True, the problem only occurs with Visual Assist enabled. But I've become pretty happy with Visual Assist, so I hope it can be made to work.

Superb!

Thank you!

Thanks heaps for the fix! You rock!

So I also tried Y in visual mode... and you're right, it had a bug. I've fixed it, 1.4.5-alpha-6:

  http://www.viemu.com/ViEmu145a6.msi

You need to manually uninstall the previous version before installing this one.

It also implements :clo[se] and Ctrl-W c to close the current window/split.

Thanks for the feedback!