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Build 20021030 Many people have complained about editor linking losing their context, particularly when you close an editor and it warps the view to select the newly activated editor, which you often have no interest in at the time. Erich and I have agreed that we should replace the preferences for editor linking with explicit synchronize actions on the relevant views (Navigator, Package Explorer in the SDK). There should be an action in the view's toolbar with tooltip "Synchronize". The same action should appear in the view's context menu (not the triangle view menu since it's not a view setting). This needs to be done for 2.1, preferrably for M3.
Should see if VCM has a synchronize icon we can steal.
Are you saying that the synchronize action should link both ways or just from view to editor?
The packages view always does forward linking (selecting in view activates editor if open) even if the linking preference is turned off. So the preference only controls backwards linking (changing view selection when switching editors). We could do the same in the Navigator.
So to clarify, the sync button would just sync backwards (update the view's selection to be the active file).
"refresh" is already on the context menu in the Navigator, and is a synonym for "synchronize", but does something different. The word "synchronize" will be confusing, and will make the context menu even larger. Show in packages view is useful, but the only reason I do this is so I can right click on the CU and do something like "Team->Commit...". If this is the reason for linking the packages/naviagtor view, why not put the IResource's context menu somewhere else. Perhaps the File Menu? Or maybe it is the Editor's responsibility to put Actions like "Commit.." somewhere. In fact, only the editor knows how many resources it is really editing.
I think it would be bad to have an action in the context menu that does not operate on the selected resource or even its project. Instead it would change the selected resource. Instead of having a view action why don't we use a workbench action? The Java Coding action set adds a "Show in Navigator View" action to the Navigate menu. It opens the navigator if it is not already visible. I think this is exactly what we want, on a more global level. We should just make that a Navigator action in ui. This would also map nicely to the new Go To Resource workbench action. We could add the Synchronize/Show in Navigator action to the same action set.
I typed my comment while Randy typed his. I think the synchronize context menu item is confusing, regardless of the name. If it's in the context menu you couldn't really name it "Show in Navigator View" because you are already there. "Show Active Editor" is not very good either. In response to Randy's comment: I often use the editor->view linking to give me a starting point for browsing resources. For example when I'm looking for a messages.properties.
*** Bug 2069 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
When Erich was here last week we discussed this. We feel that the "Show in XYZ View" approach does not scale (whether on the context menu or main menus). For example, WSAD and WSADIE add several Navigator-like views. Would each have a menu item? We felt that having an explicit sync button on the toolbar of the view would be cleaner. It means you have to navigate to the view first, which will require more steps than currently, particularly if the view is not already showing. It shouldn't be too bad if it already is showing though, and may actually be faster: clicking an already visible button rather than choosing an item from a (cluttered) context menu. I agree that having both "Synchronize" and "Refresh" is confusing. How about "Sync with Editor"? We need to have a menu equivalent for accessibility, but I agree that it would be confusing for an action on the context menu to just change the selection. The view menu should only be used for view settings (filtering, sorting, etc.). Let's go with Knut's suggestion and put it on the Navigate menu, where the "Show in XYZ" items are now (it will replace them).
Didn't find a suitable icon to reuse within the CVS realm, so NE put in a request to Linda for an icon.
Created attachment 2373 [details] temporary image to use for this fix
Added toolitem to Navigator toolbar and added item to Workbench->Navigate menu. The Navigate menu item is a RetargetAction that will be enabled when the associated view has focus. See IWorkbenchActionConstants>>SYNC_EDITOR. Removed the Workbench-->Link Navigator selection to editor preference. Included temporary icon to use for the toolbar image.
Verified for RC3 (200303192032).
