• State Verified Answer
  • +1 person also asked this people also asked this
  • Replies 12 replies
  • Subscribers 11 subscribers
  • Views 18308 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related Discussions
Home » Discussions » AI and Rules

Is there a new keyboard shortcut for adding a block comment in rules designer in 17.2? ("Ctrl+Shift+/" doesn't work anymore in 17.2)

miteshp

"Ctrl+Shift+/" to add a block comment in expression and interface rules stopped working in 17.2. Is there a new keyboard shortcut for achieving this. "Ctrl+/" just toggles selected text to a comment. If selected text spread across multiple lines, "Ctrl+/" toggles individual lines explicitly to comment instead of commenting out the entire block.

"Ctrl+Shift+/" used to work in "17.1-" and was very helpful. Please suggest.

  Discussion posts and replies are publicly visible

Parents Reply Children
  • 0
    A Score Level 2
     in reply to Alison Montemayor

    I think it's really helpful for debugging. If you have the following line:

    if( and( .... several conditions ...), ... true branch ... , ... false branch ...)

    Maybe you just want to quickly go through one of the two branches, so you highlight the complex and, hit the shortcut to comment it out, and add either true or false.

    There are many other cases, but that's one that I've run into often.

  • 0 in reply to Alison Montemayor
    Shortcuts, in general, are Appian's biggest weakness, in my opinion. The few that are available in the expression editor are nice, but productivity doesn't start and stop at expression design. Personally, I use shortcuts for the majority of programs and applications, including the OS. In some cases, I don't even know the traditional method of performing an operation (usually clicking through a plethora of menus), because I only know the keyboard shortcuts to access it. Anything that doesn't support shortcuts, frankly, slows me down and reduces my productivity. This is the category that Appian occupies, at the moment. Shortcuts are much needed in the areas of Application Design, Navigation, and, without a doubt, process model design. Dragging and dropping is a slow and inefficient process.

    In software design, it is important to be consistent throughout the whole platform. For example, when using Microsoft Office, the scenario isn't that Word supports shortcuts and Excel doesn't, or even more appropos, table design feature isn't the only feature that supports shortcuts in a given Office product. The whole platform supports shortcuts.

    Anyway, just my two cents.
  • 0 in reply to Alison Montemayor

    "In 17.1 and prior versions, any keyboard shortcuts that were not listed in the documentation were not supported (see docs.appian.com/.../Expressions.html for a full list)." - Shortcut for adding comments doesn't exist in this list, but was available for use in previous versions of Appian. Does this mean, a designer functionality might be available for use but not supported by Appian team? Kind of use at your own risk?

    "I am curious as to why the comment shortcut that is in 17.2 is not sufficient, though. Is it simply a personal preference of not wanting the comments on separate lines, or have you noticed an actual difference in behavior?" - It's not a personal preference. Previously using "Ctrl+Shift+\" placing the cursor within the commented out block (/* asdad |sdasd */) used to uncomment the entire block expanding across lines. Now doing "Ctrl+/" just toggles a line in a commented out block, sometimes generate error (when "Ctrl+/" applied on "/* dsfsdfdsf | fsafsd */ sdfdsfs" with cursor in commented out text it generates "dsfsdfdsf fsafsd */ sdfdsfs" instead of "dsfsdfdsf fsafsd sdfdsfs"). Requires extra steps to remove the "/*" and "*/" in case a line contains both commented out and actual code. Difficult at times when you are habituated of using a different key sequence.

    But having said that. I could see Appian is enhancing it's UI a lot which is remarkable! I am pretty hopeful that we will get these shortcuts back and many new developer friendly features in coming versions.

© 2024 Appian. All rights reserved.