Taking Stock

Well, the initial download rush for SketchPath has abated somewhat, so this now provides an opportunity to take stock and consider priorities to move towards that first release version.

Things that need sorting:
1. Fill in feature gaps such as:
a. Auto-generation of XPath for comments and processing instructions
b. Tracing through parenthesized expression blocks
c. Population of Value Nodes pane with comments and processing instructions

2. While keeping the user interface simple, provide more intuitive flexibility with positioning and orientation of panes

3. Allow more control over various settings and permit these to be persisted between sessions.
4. Fix bugs

So, the list doesn't look to imposing, the main thing is to keep ambitions in rein for v1.0 this will also allow me to do a better job for the documentation and a few 'off the shelf' XPath libraries.

SketchPath Update

The latest release of SketchPath, 0.5.5.0 (Beta) went out today.

This update is part of the continuous improvements that will happen until version 1.0 is ready, before the end of 2007.

Latest enhancements:
1. Unicode support for opening and saving XML - New Settings view allows configuration for this.
2. In the Regular Expression mode, its now possible to switch Case Sensitivity on or off
3. The XML text highlighter is now improved to enhance the readability of the highlighted section
4. Double-Clicking on any part of an XPath expression now takes you directly into Trace Mode for that part.
5. The Assist Pane has enhanced usability
6. A number of minor bugfixes

Please let me know what I can do to improve SketchPath - I've got a long list anyhow, but it would be good to prioritise this.

Anyone got any good (non copyright) XPath libraries they'd like to share?

Looking Good

Spent the last couple of weeks giving the SketchPath Assist Pane a makeover, release 0.5.4.1 went out 2nd September with this enhancement.

Things have improved so much with the usability of the Assist Pane that I was confident enough to leave it visible as the default setting. Even when 'hidden' the 'Intelli-List' is still shown, this can be such a powerful aide and it takes up minimal room alongside the results pane.

This is probably my most preferred area of programming, looking at user interfaces and trying to make them more efficient whilst not being forced to conform to other adopted standards. Something isn't necessarily intuitive because lots of other tools use the same behaviour.

Had a bit of a breakthrough in performance issues with RichTextBox highlighting that has bothered me for some time, hopefully this will be evident in the next SketchPath release next Sunday.

Anyway for now, I've included a screenshot fragment of the latest release