Exception Detector (EXCD) by godarklight

Exception Detector (EXCD) by godarklight

965 Downloads

[Request]: Adding functionality to add usability and update GUI

Alpaccalypse opened this issue ยท 2 comments

commented

Description of the new feature / enhancement

The UI for EXCD is extremely useful for checking for errors after installing new mods and/or using them in new situations, but at the moment it is very bare bones. Some key features, added to the UI element, would make it even more useful in this regard. Specifically:

  • Using EXCD to check for errors occurring after scene changes and other times the game load/unloads and references installed mods.
  • Multiple verbose errors being logged to the UI, and changes to that list.

Proposed technical implementation details

Features I would love to see that would address the above issues:

  1. Window resizing/scrolling.
  2. Toolbar integration.
  3. Pinning of errors, to keep them at the top of the list.

These would help because:

  1. At the moment, verbose errors can cause the list to expand well beyond the bottom of the screen.
  2. If you close the window, there is no obvious way to open it again. Toolbar integration would likely be ideal for use with future feature additions to EXCD too.
  3. This would help for tracking intermittent errors, and would be particularly useful in conjunction with the other features listed here.

I've no idea how difficult this would be to implement, but from the point of view of a fan of the mod, they would be a huge step forward from a user's perspective. I have some other feature requests, that would also benefit from these improvements; They are not directly related to this, however, and lower on my wish-list, so I will save those for a later date/general discussion.

commented

RE: #30 #31 #45 #43 #42 #41 #46 #47

Thank you: @Alpaccalypse all valid suggestions. I have been programming for a few decades, not professionally (well not professionally lately) and GUI's are far from my forte. I am asking another who might help for assistance. In their best interest...

I also want to move the location of the .log (and maybe rename the suffix) along with a time stamp...

I might try to tackle the super-sized window code now that I have my dev-system install working from a RAMDISK (load times is sub-30 seconds) - which is the most time consuming part of working on a plugin for any game.

That and maybe a hotkey to make it show - suggestions for which hotkey? some combination of maybe?

@Lisias

commented

Thanks for working on this. I'd offer to help, but I'm barely competent to edit config files, so I suspect my contributions to any coding would likely be more of a hindrance than a help.

Log timestamps would be welcomed by me. Currently, I'm manually copying and renaming them, so I can compare between different mod loadouts.

As for hotkey choices: looking at the KSP key bindings, this is a trickier question than I realised. On the premise that E, X, D or L are the most intuitive choices for"EXceptionDetector Log", and minimising crossovers with operating system and KSP defaults, as well as how easy the key combo would be to press, I reckon Mod + E, comes out on top ("mod" being the Alt key in Windows).

  • It doesn't seem to be used by KSP.
  • "E" on its own won't do anything too dramatic if mis-pressed.
  • AFAIK this combo isn't anything critical on most OSes.

Whether any other popular mods also use this hotkey is unknown to me, though. Mod + D seems to pass the same criteria if you need a backup suggestion.