Breakdown of remaining 2.4 bugs

[Daniel]

On 2023-07-28 17:46, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote:
> On 7/28/23 04:21, Pavel Sanda wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 27, 2023 at 11:26:09PM -0400, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote:
>> #12577 - complex code to improve source editor within LyX; only JMarc 
>> tried
>>>> to understand and failed; anyone wants to engage?
>>> This is too big for 2.4.0. I've retargeted to 2.4.1. But I'm not 
>>> really sure about it. I'll have a look at it between now and then.
>> For this particular case I think the question whether we *want* 
>> feature. In other words do we want to guarantee support and bugfixing 
>> the code we don't understand ourselves? :)
> 
> Yes, I think that question has been raised before: Is it worth it 
> essentially to embed a code editor in LyX when we can edit externally 
> now? I hate not to use something that so much work went into, but this 
> is a good example of why it's bad to code first and design second.

I don't get the code first, design second thing because being able to 
edit externally was possible before I started to work on that. So, 
obviously, I took that into consideration (see below).

I think it is more about asking the developers whether they like such a 
feature or not. I provided some opportunity for this, including on the 
list. But don't worry about my feelings or the work that went into. As I 
have said before, I will use my patches locally anyway.

But it seems like a good idea for a couple of reasons. Yes, it is true 
that one can use an external editor. But for small edits, such as 
commenting out a part of the code, this seems to be unnecessary 
cumbersome. This patch is not supposed to substitute a full blown 
editor. It is really just to provide minimal help for small edits. 
Otherwise, why not just remove any possibility of editing of code inside 
LyX? I don't think it's a good idea because, for example, the external 
editing feature is too cumbersome for this. But the reasoning against 
the patch presented above seems to lead there.

Another reason is that to get support for commenting out of LyX's own 
layout code is nothing that someone who is not a code editor specialist 
will be able to accomplish easily. And I think it should not be taken 
for granted that (almost) all LyX users are code editor wizards.

In summary, I think there will always be people that prefer to edit code 
inside of LyX, at least sometimes. And for those some *minimal* code 
editing support is very helpful.

Daniel