Perspective restrictions

Why is it necessary to restrict which buttons and windows can be shown in any given perspective?

I understand why perspectives exist; M2M/Eclipse has so many features that there is not enough room to display them all at once, and doing so would provide a cluttered and confusing interface. Controls are therefore split up by task, into different perspectives, each perspective containing the most useful controls for that task.

However, I have 2 huge monitors, so find it quite tedious to keep switching perspectives when I have enough space to display all of my most frequently used controls/windows at the same time. I have tried customising one of the perspectives, to add components that by default only exist on another perspective, but for some reason, certain controls are forbidden from appearing in certain perspectives.

For example, I can’t show the build configurations button in the debug perspective, and I can’t show the debug control in the OpenAT perspective. Buttons related to target management can only be shown on the target management perspective. From the debug perspective, I can create a new project, but not a new OpenAT project.

I think that M2M uses a sensible default configuration, but unnecessarily restricts the level of customisation available to the user.

We haven’t put particular restrictions, but indeed it’s not possible to customize your perspectives as much as you wish.
We’ll have a look on how to improve modularity of our toolbars and menu items.

However, as soon as an element appears in the Customize perspective dialog, it seems possible to enable it by enabling the corresponding command group in the relevant dialog tab.
E.g. point the mouse on a grayed item, wait for the tooltip indicating which command group you have to enable, and enable it: the item should not be grayed anymore.


Thanks for the tip, but this only helps with controls that are listed, but disabled. Most items I want to use aren’t even listed.

I guess I’ll just have to wait.

The menu-sets of the openat and target perspective aren’t even named?

Logged for optimization. Could make a short list of what you expect to be displayed in this customization dialog?

I wish to be able to carry out most of my daily work from a single perspective, switching only when I have to do something exceptional. The required tasks are:

  • Manage projects
  • Edit and browse code
  • Switch between build configurations
  • Compile code
  • Connect/disconnect with the target
  • Transfer firmware to the target
  • Debug the target
  • View shell output

Generally, I don’t use traces, but I’m sure this would be useful to others too.

So far, the perspective which I can add the most of this functionality to is the debug perspective. However, I still cannot do the following:

  • Create a new OpenAT project (OK, this is possible, but it’s not listed on the new project button like it is on the OpenAT perspective, so you have to go through the wizzard).
  • Connect/disconnect with the target
  • Transfer firmware (I want to use the “Download software” button that is on the target management perspective, not the Run button which is currently available in both the OpenAT and debug perspectives, because that has unwanted side effects).
  • Open a new shell output window (I can view the output once it’s opened, but certain actions will close this window, so I have to switch to the target management perspective to open it again, then back to the perspective I was using).

I would also prefer it if opening a new debug instance did not take me away from the debug perspective.

Thanks

Thanks for your inputs