Carriage return check block added to Serial Monitor.
A simple "check block" added to the Serial Monitor to enable or disable appending a CR (Enter/0x0D) when
the send button is clicked.
This one has been suggested by many other people. It caused a bit of dustup on the developer forum with several people supporting the idea and two members of the arduino team insisting that the feature was "too complex for beginners" or something like that.
Others may characterize the discussion in other ways. I found it too boring to do more than observe at a distance and the arc of the outcome was obvious.
Apparently a barely functional IDE is part of Arduino's charm.
paulb
This forces the end user or forum member to use a third party terminal program when using an Arduino for serial communications. Arduino's IDE built-in serial monitor should have this simple "CR fix" installed. How complex is this IDE fix. >:( >:( >:(
what about simple macro expansion, like \r\n to '0x0d' '0x0a'? It could be toggled in options just in case \ was needed for something else. Of course \ would turn into a regular ''
Good idea, but unacceptable considering the "ease of use" with a simple check block on the serial monitor.
Please note: Issue #119 is similar to mine but I provided a solution.
http://code.google.com/p/arduino/issues/list
Actually, one of the motivations for moving the serial monitor into its own window was to make room for additional functionality like selectable line endings. I'm hoping to add a drop-down for choosing between no line ending, CR, NL, or CR+NL.
I don't think Arduino should try to be a good serial monitor too, there are plenty of programs that are better than the Arduino software can ever hope to attain within the amount of work that can be allotted. Better to focus on stability issues and existing bugs rather than try to add more features.
Even the most basic serial monitors have the capability to append CR's and LF's to denote data chr/string termination. I guess, for some users, serial communications, on an Arduino, is not a necessary function.
Any improvement in the serial monitor would help out a lot.
:o :o :o
Options on sending and recieving cr an lf are a pretty minimum requirement. Please add. Do not worry that this will make it a full function terminal that will confuse people, there is still a lot more to add to get there. Hide the functionality slightly if necessary. Or I guess I will always run a half decent terminal emulator at the same time. But seems sad. 
I hesitate to keep repeating myself, but occasionally with nagging things get changes.
This is the kind of easy, sensible stuff that could easily be addressed if more than one person were working / making decisions on the IDE code. Users were asking for this change years ago.
Is still would be nice to see the Arduino team loosen up and add some other people's code and contributions to the core, without having to micromanage, nitpick, and agonize over every change. Find rough consensus, Get some jobs done. Move on. The Arduino team's efforts have / have had plenty of bugs in them. Errors by others are no more intolerable than native Arduino team errors (v 17 just the latest example).
The biggest mystery is: Why does the Arduino team feel the need to reject one of the largest advantages of open-source software?
I don't understand. This is a good idea and something I'm planning to add. If you'd like to help with the implementation, great. If not, I'll get to it when I have a chance.