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Godot Improvement Proposals (GIPs)
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QOL-Enhancement: Dragging properties from inspector into code without "Quotation marks" #8014

Open nosdregamon opened 1 year ago

nosdregamon commented 1 year ago

Describe the project you are working on

I'm scripting in the Godot-Engine Editor for a 3rd Person RPG. The project however is pretty irrelevant, the idea can be applied whenever someone is scripting.

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

I just noticed, that I can drag properties from the inspector into code. Just search for the the property I want, say Node2d->Position, drag the name and I got "position" in my script - that's awesome (and I feel silly for not trying that earlier).

However, this always ends up in quotation marks, so it's "position" not just position and in scripts I usually need the latter. So I remove the quotation marks by hand. Not a big deal, but it would be "nice to have" quality of live improvement, to drag without quotes.

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Ideally it would be it's own modifier shortcut (say "CTRL+Drag&Drop" to get the desired result, or "ALT+Drag&Drop" if CTRL does something in this regard already, that I overlooked). But currently nothing in that direction exists.

Someone more savvy in the Godot sources pointed me to...

https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/6916349697a4339216469e9bf5899b983d78db07/editor/plugins/script_text_editor.cpp#L1917-L1927

... which boils down to: it's currently always quoting.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

I think the addition would be minimal such as replacing 'const String text_to_drop = _quote_drop_data(String(d["property"]));' in the code above with

const String text_to_drop = drop_modifier_pressed ? String(d["property"]) : _quote_drop_data(String(d["property"]));

https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/6916349697a4339216469e9bf5899b983d78db07/editor/plugins/script_text_editor.cpp#L1921

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

I don't think, that this can be done with a script, as this looks "hardcoded".

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

As above: I don't think, that this can be done with a script, as this looks "hardcoded". For that reason I think, an addon wouldn't be able to work around this.

timothyqiu commented 1 year ago

Would it be better to use autocomplete in this case?

In most cases, I belive typing .pos<enter> is more convenient than typing ., searching for the property in the inspector and drag & drop.

One use case of quoted names is for accessing properties that don't have autocomplete available, e.g. properties that have slashes in their name.

theraot commented 1 year ago

I'm ready to make a pull request for this. However, I have some other ideas for what CTRL might do that I want to try out first. I might do a counter proposal, but first I want to experiment to see if my ideas are feasible.

Addendum 1: I have opened a counter-proposal: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/8017 Addendum 2: I have made a pull request for this.

nosdregamon commented 1 year ago

@timothyqiu : it's probably faster, if you know what you're searching for, but I'm starting from 0 again and often don't know, until I found it in the inspector. Perhaps think of it as an accessibility-feature for newbies ?

@theraot : that sounds even more more awesome. Thank you.

aXu-AP commented 1 year ago

I'd ask the following question: when you don't want property to have quotation marks? Only cases I can think of are:

  1. When user has already written quotes.
  2. When using object.property syntax.

Both of these are easy to identify by checking the character before the dropping point, and leave quotes out if matching ', " or .. This way the user doesn't need to press the modifier key for this.

theraot commented 1 year ago

@aXu-AP That sounds tempting, but I'm going to use an argument similar to yours.

And sure, we could parse more of the code and figure it out (and that probably would be a bigger mess)… Would it not be more predictible if the generated code only depended on what you dragged and how, and not on where you drop it?

aXu-AP commented 1 year ago

@theraot Hmm, good points. I think your counter proposal might be the best way to proceed.

timothyqiu commented 1 year ago

it's probably faster, if you know what you're searching for, but I'm starting from 0 again and often don't know, until I found it in the inspector. Perhaps think of it as an accessibility-feature for newbies ?

I'm not sure if it's worth it to make a feature that is:

See my main comment: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/8017#issuecomment-1751669874

nosdregamon commented 1 year ago

@aXu-AP:

I'd ask the following question: when you don't want property to have quotation marks?

Perhaps I'm not programming the intended way, but so far I barely ever used them in quotation marks. For example, a function "dumbed down to work as an example" from a 2D experiment:

     if position.distance_to(enemy.position)<20:
        position = enemy.position
        z_index = enemy.z_index
        visible = true 
        #... and other code to end stealth mode and deal damage.

None of these properties work, if quoted.

@timothyqiu