Hi! Now that I’m getting closer to 200 OPENRNDR sketches I struggle to remember which one is which.
I thought that it would be very useful to have a plugin for Idea to show thumbnails of sketches and load the code by clicking on the image. It would be like the current list of files on the left pane, but with images above each .kt file.
I thought of automating it too, but I often rename my sketches. Well maybe we can have different options, like first look at the metadata, if it’s not there, look in a folder for a png with the same name as the .kt file.
You can find a download under Releases, but only after reading the readme, please!
The fact that the plugin stores metadata as a comment in your Kotlin files has advantages and disadvantages:
positive
The metadata is easy to sync across computers because it ends up in your repo. It’s not in a hidden internal IDE database, which would be harder to sync.
Seeing it at the top of your file invites you to write a description for your program, which can help you understand it later.
You can rename the Kotlin files outside of the IDE and the thumbnail stays in sync, because the metadata wouldn’t change.
meh
A plugin that edits your code might be considered heresy by some
It could potentially mess up your code if I did it wrong.
Maybe where to store the metadata could be user selectable?
If I receive feedback and make it user friendlier (an about screen? an integrated user manual? More configurable?) I could release it in the market to make it easier to install.
Coming features
I’m adding a feature to update the readme.md of the currently open project to show the thumbnails with links to each programs. Something like what you can see in this repo. In other words, it’s a bit like bringing the side panel with all the thumbnails online so other people can also see them and find the source code for each program.
Grid view, instead of only one column. That would help see more thumbnails simultaneously, less scrolling.
I think I will change the plugin to use one global folder for all thumbnails, instead of one per project.
The idea behind this is that sometimes I move programs from one project to another, and it is tedious to find the right thumbnail images and move them between project folders.
I will also stop putting the thumbnails in git repos and instead upload them to my server.
The reason for that is that at least one provider (CodeBerg) does not like it when you request 100 images at once, and it starts rate-limiting the requests, so the images look broken (for instance in the hamoid/orchid repo I linked above). If I put the images on my own server this won’t happen.
Right click thumb and choose From most recent screenshot for an easy way to set the thumbnail after taking a screenshot.