CoNo

CoNo originates from "Code Note". It is an Eclipse plug-in. The intention of CoNo is to provide Eclipse users a convenient way to take brief notes when editing source files in the editor. The notes are different from comments because they are not published along with the source files.

CoNo consists of a view window in which the user can type, copy, cut and paste text. As for other views, a user is free to close the view at any time without affecting other editor or view windows. When the user switches the source file in the editor, the CoNo view will be automatically refreshed to display the corresponding CoNo file content. Saving of the source file in the editor will trigger the saving of the corresponding CoNo file automatically.

Download

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cono/

Installation

Simply extract the files into the Eclipse directory

Screenshots

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How It Works

For each source file opened in the editor, CoNo will generate one CoNo file in the hidden (only in *nix systems) directory .cono/ which is located in the same directory as the corresponding source files. The CoNo file is named according to the source file. For example, the CoNo file corresponding to the source file source.java will be named source.java.cono. Note that at most one CoNo file will be generated for each source file.

Known Bugs

1. This plug-in does not support editing, renaming, moving, creating or deleting of files
2. The color preference cannot be saved

Supported Functionalities

1. The user should be able to type, cut, copy and paste text in the CoNo view.
2. The saving of the source file triggers the saving of the corresponding CoNo file automatically. The user should never need to explicitly save the CoNo file.
3. CoNo should not alter the original Eclipse code or the functionalities of the original Eclipse platform in any way.
4. CoNo should create a .cono\ directory to store the CoNo files in the same directory as the source files.
5. A CoNo file is not created until the user saves the corresponding source file for the first time.
6. CoNo should not create any file if the user chooses not to use the plug-in.
7. When a user opens a source file with existing CoNo file, enables CoNo plug-in and opens CoNo view, the corresponding CoNo file should be displayed in the CoNo view. If there is no existing CoNo file for that source file, a blank CoNo file will be displayed.
8. CoNo should be able to refresh the CoNo view to display the correct CoNo file when the user switches the source file in the editor.
9. There should be at most one CoNo file for each source file.
10. The CoNo window should not close unless the user chooses to close it.
11. The CoNo window should close when the user closes it by selecting the "x" on the top right corner of the CoNo view.
12. The user should be able to re-open a closed CoNo window by selecting "Window" menu -> "Show view" list -> "Code Note", or by selecting "Window" menu -> "Show view" list -> "Others..." -> "Code Note" in the pop-up window.
13. The CoNo window should be resizable and movable to other locations in the view.
14. All empty CoNo files are deleted automatically. All empty .cono directories are also deleted.
15. CoNo font color can be changed using the preference menu. The color of CoNo font is change immediately.
16. The color chooser should look the same as other color choosers appeared in Eclipse.

Version History

V1.0 December 14, 2002 Initial Version

Developers

Betty Leung
Elaine Ting
Kelvin Tsang
Ivan Wan

References

Eclipse homepage
http://www.eclipse.org/
Eclipse plug-in homepage
http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/
Java homepage
http://sun.java.com/