Live Templates for Spring not properly configured; documentation

Hello Thomas,

Hi,

In the current IJ 7.0x releases and EAP build, it seems that the
Spring Live Templates are not properly configured. At first glance it
seems they are not available from within a Spring configuration file.
Checking the Live Templates, it occures that for none of them the
XML-context is configured, which causes the problem. Please fix this
for the next minor release. And, please, also add at least a small
description to them, up to now there is nothing except the partly
cryptic abbreviations. It seems that release quality control failed
here completely.

I think the templates are intended to be accessed by the "Generate" menu
(Alt-Insert) when editing spring xml.

As a side note, due to some internal restructuring, it might happen
that we are forced to switch to a Eclipse distribution, because that's
what an external consultant partner recommends. My favorite would be
MyEclipse.

However, I think that IntelliJ is still much more usable and
comfortable than all this Eclipse stuff, however, if I compare
MyEclipse's documentation and help system, the ones of IntelliJ seem
really poor. MyEclipse contains a tremendous amount of resources and
the help browser itself seems to be far more usable.

I hope that JetBrains can work on the documentation issue. There are
not enough tutorials. This stuff is very important for newbies. (The
new group of developers we have to incorporate do not have much Java
experience.) If they are presented both IntelliJ and MyEclipse I am
afraid that they would opt for the latter, because they have more
resources to start and learn with.

An article describing the available facets and the way to configure them
seems like a good idea.
For example, when using JPA with Hibernate, should I add a JPA facet or a
Hibernate facet?
(I know the answer, but it's not really obvious).

In addition, some description of setting up Web and Spring facets for a module
also belongs in such a tutorial.

The documentation issue is not directly related to the topic, however,
the fact that an important assistance feature, such as Live Templates,
is not properly configured, could add to the unfavorable impression
our newbies might get from IntelliJ.

I agree, IDEA documentation is bad (Use of JavaHelp is one reason).
To be fair, the IDEA UI is the least complex of the other IDEs IMO.

However, new users can really benefit from a tutorial-style introduction.

-tt

Hi Taras,

Nice, that someone agrees with my observation.

I can't see, how the Spring Live Templates work together with the Generate (ALT-ENTER) feature, in its original configuration this does not seem to work either (or is - again - not documented).

The really need stuff is that the MyEclipse distribution also includes the basic Hibernate and Spring documentation, which are referenced from the IDE docs. This makes it very comfortable for beginners to start.

Other than that, I find all this perspective ui business in Eclipse rather confusing (coming from IntelliJ) but new users might not. (Recently, I was stunned that it is not possible to specify the print font for printed code listings and to print with line numbers from Eclipse, which was one reason I switched back ot IJ the same day.)

By the way, which facet should I use, when I want to do my OR mappings with annotations? Obviously, I had the same problem. You say you know it, can you tell me the answer?

Regarding documentation, I urge JetBrains since years to improve it (provide a printable help documentation, a better help browser etc.), no results. They produced some tutorials on the web, but these efforts are half-hearted, inconsistent, probably never updated and not interlinked - more adressing marketing aspects than anything else.

Kind regrards

Thomas Gülden
Munich, Germany

Hello Thomas,

Nice, that someone agrees with my observation.

I can't see, how the Spring Live Templates work together with the
Generate (ALT-ENTER) feature, in its original configuration this does
not seem to work either (or is - again - not documented).

For example, try this (in spring xml):
Alt-Insert ->
"Template Beans" ->
"Common Beans" ->
"Property Placeholder Configurer"

This will use the "placeholder" live template from the "spring" group.

My personal opintion is that most (all?) of the current live templates from
the spring group should be hidden.
No sane person is going to remember "toplinktasa", much less need more that
once a month. But perhaps you have different opinion?

In other words, I think that current "spring" live templates group is an
(unnecessarily exposed) implementation detail of the "Insert->Template Beans"
feature.

The really need stuff is that the MyEclipse distribution also includes
the basic Hibernate and Spring documentation, which are referenced
from the IDE docs. This makes it very comfortable for beginners to
start.

Other than that, I find all this perspective ui business in Eclipse
rather confusing (coming from IntelliJ) but new users might not.
(Recently, I was stunned that it is not possible to specify the print
font for printed code listings and to print with line numbers from
Eclipse, which was one reason I switched back ot IJ the same day.)

By the way, which facet should I use, when I want to do my OR mappings
with annotations? Obviously, I had the same problem. You say you know
it, can you tell me the answer?

Hibernate facet (Gregory Shrago will correct me if I'm wrong).
However, I wonder if in this case IDEA will inject HQL into JPA APIs?

Regarding documentation, I urge JetBrains since years to improve it
(provide a printable help documentation, a better help browser
etc.), no results. They produced some tutorials on the web, but these
efforts are half-hearted, inconsistent, probably never updated and not
interlinked - more adressing marketing aspects than anything else.

I think that they are listening. However, from my own work experience I can
understand how documentation somehow always trickles down the priority list.
For what it's worth I agree that ditching the current JavaHelp for somethink
better would be a good start for next version.

-tt

Hello Taras,

>> Regarding documentation, I urge JetBrains since years to improve it
>> (provide a printable help documentation, a better help browser
>> etc.), no results. They produced some tutorials on the web, but these
>> efforts are half-hearted, inconsistent, probably never updated and
>> not interlinked - more adressing marketing aspects than anything
>> else.
>>

I think that they are listening. However, from my own work experience
I can understand how documentation somehow always trickles down the
priority list. For what it's worth I agree that ditching the current
JavaHelp for somethink better would be a good start for next version.

By the way, we're now discussing the possibility to replace JavaHelp with
our custom help viewer, so specific suggestions for such a viewer are very
much welcome at the moment.

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

Hello Dmitry,

By the way, we're now discussing the possibility to replace JavaHelp
with our custom help viewer, so specific suggestions for such a viewer
are very much welcome at the moment.

One easy candidate for improvement is this: the current help has some modality
issues.
IIRC when I launch context-sensitive help I can not navigate from current
help document to somewhere else.

-tt

Hi Taras,

I missmatched ALT-ENTER and ALT-INSERT. With the latter you have template assistance.

Try type "Spring" in the IntelliJ help and in MyEclipse help - these are different worlds.

It is unfortunate, that JetBrains does not improve this.

Best regards

Thomas

Thomas Gülden
Munich, Germany