Auto Format tab size

Development Tools IDE 2.x
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A few comments from someone who used the new IDE for the first time yesterday...

Firstly, I think that IDE 2.0 is great!

Some comments...

  1. Auto Format. This is a great feature but unless I have missed something it always indents 2 spaces irrespective of the current tab setting??? To me this rather spoils the whole feature.
  2. It took me a while to learn that I needed to press F1 then Open Preferences to get to the real preferences window. This should probably be much more obvious.
  3. On Ubuntu I am not seeing an icon in the activity bar
  4. Go to Definition is great. The inverse "Find all references" would be equally great. Am I missing something? Does it already exist?
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tk6:
Firstly, I think that IDE 2.0 is great!

I'm very glad to hear it! Thanks so much for taking the time to provide some valuable feedback.

tk6:

  1. Auto Format. This is a great feature but unless I have missed something it always indents 2 spaces irrespective of the current tab setting??? To me this rather spoils the whole feature.

As of the latest nightly build, it is now possible to customize the auto format configuration according to your preferences:

The auto format tool is ClangFormat, and it is customized via a file named .clang-format, which can use any of the configuration settings documented here:
https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormatStyleOptions.html

tk6:
2) It took me a while to learn that I needed to press F1 then Open Preferences to get to the real preferences window. This should probably be much more obvious.

It is intentionally not a prominent part of the UI because these preferences are only useful to advanced users. The target user of the Arduino IDE will have all their needs met by File > Preferences:

However, I do think it will be important to produce some documentation for the advanced usage of the IDE, and the information about the command palette will surely be part of that documentation.

Unfortunately, right now there is not really a lot of documentation for the Arduino IDE 2.x. Fortunately, the UI is similar enough that the massive amount of documentation and tutorials for the classic IDE are just as applicable to Arduino IDE 2.x. But of course there hasn't been the time for much to accumulate for the new features yet.

tk6:
3) On Ubuntu I am not seeing an icon in the activity bar

This is a known bug, which is tracked here:

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Thanks very much for quick response and valuable information. I shall get the latest nightly build and play with Auto-Format.

I agree with the concept of "preferences" and "advanced preferences". All I was actually trying to do the first time was change the tab spacing in the editor - probably this and perhaps some others should be available under File > Preferences. (but, in a sense this is no longer important to me because I now know how to change it).

Any comment on "Find all References"?

Thanks again.

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