Hi,
the arduino-IDE is still quite simple. A feature like marking lines to jump from mark to mark up or down or directly from mark2 to mark 10 would look very good inside the Arduino-IDE.
What alternative to the Arduino build-in-IDE does have such a feature AND is freeware and pretty easy to install?
best regards
Stefan
google-keywords related to this item: alternative to Arduino-IDE, using other text-editors to code for Arduino combine other text-editor with arduino-compiler the easy way
So I found a work-around how to use another code-editor / text-editor like jEDIT which has syntax-high-lighting and a lot of useful functions the Arduino-IDE only can dream of and still use the Arduino-IDE for compiling and uploading:
And now I'm gonna write a how to with pretty much details so that others not only get a hint but a manual that - hopefully - will make others up and running the same thing.
This solution has its limits and some prerequisites that must be fullfilled to make it work:
first of all :
the Window of Arduino-IDE must begin in the upper-left corner of your screen
no other window is allowed to cover the upper-left-corner of your scree,n because automated mouse-clicks must "hit"
the Arduino-IDE-window at this place.
You need to install Autohotkey (AHK)
The hotkey defined in Autohotkey must be pressed if your texteditor is the active window.
Otherwise the keystrokes and mouseclicks generated by autohotkey might modify other files or the code in the arduino-editor in an unwanted way.
I'm already using Autohotkey AHK which can be downloaded here:
https://autohotkey.com/download/
Autohotkey is a very powerful framework to automate a lot of things. Here it is used to create mouse-moves and keystrokes to get another text-editor and Arduino-IDE glued together.
In Autohotkey you can write scripts that run all the time in the backround waiting for defined conditions to match. Here the condition is a certain key-kombination is pressed.
The script I use here is this
!#u:: ; the letter-sequence "!#u" means if Alt-Windows-u is pressed run down this script
Send ^s ; Ctrl-s = save current version of the file
Send ^a ; Ctrl-a = mark all
Send ^c ; Ctrl-c copy to clipboard
Send {Esc} ; unmark everything (specific hotkey in jEDIT)
; move mouse to the upper left corner where the Arduino-IDE-Window must be placed
; the coordinates 25,10 has some distance to the right-upper-corner to avoid activating the window-menu
CoordMode, Mouse , Screen
Click 25,10
Send ^a ; Ctrl-a = mark all in Arduino-IDE
Send ^v ; Ctrl-v = paste clipboard into Arduino-IDE to synchronise saved version of the file with the text
; inside the Arduino-IDes editor
;Send ^s ; Ctrl-s = optional use
CoordMode, Mouse , Window ; set coordinate-mode relative to Arduino-IDE-window
Click 52,72 ; move mouse to the upload-button and do the magic click
; that starts the compiling and uploading
return
Save this script as a plain textfile with file-extenstion "ahk"
example-file-name
combine-jEdit-with-Arduino-IDE.ahk
and start the script by double-clicking on it.
I'm not very familiar with the possabilities of Autohotkey. I guess there are smarter ways to get the Arduino-IDE remote-controlled than with mouseclicks and keystrokes.
As long as the stated conditions are met it works.
If you have any questions feel free to ask them. In difference to a lot of postings here that are kept short and highly sophisticated I have the ambitious goal to make this posting so easy to understand that anybody who knows how to download and install files will be able to get it up and running. I guess there are still some questions.