Code completion missing function description?

voec · September 10, 2016, 11:25am

This is using HaxeDevelop and OpenFL version 3.6.1 (because of compatiblity reasons with HaxePunk)

I recently updated all my libraries (I think I had been using a very outdated version of OpenFL). But with more recent versions of OpenFL I don’t get any function/parameter descriptions during autocomplete anymore.

For example, if I previously typed myBitmapData.noise() in HaxeDevelop I’d get a small tooltip explaining what the function does. aka Fills an image with pixels representing random noise. and then an explanation for each parameter.

But now I only get the function and parameter names/types.

It seems this is because all the descrptive comments have been removed from all the classes somewhere around version 3.5.x. Is there a specific reason this was done?

And is the above issue expected behaviour? If so, is there any way to access these hints without having to look up the docs?

Or is this an issue with HaxeDevelop and should I ask there?

player_03 · September 10, 2016, 6:46pm

This is because OpenFL added externs for all of the Flash files, and HaxeDevelop prefers to import the externs because flash.display.* comes alphabetically before openfl.display.*.

github.com

openfl/openfl/blob/3.6.1/extern/flash/display/BitmapData.hx#L92


	public function getColorBoundsRect (mask:UInt, color:UInt, findColor:Bool = true):Rectangle;
	public function getPixel (x:Int, y:Int):Int;
	public function getPixel32 (x:Int, y:Int):Int;
	public function getPixels (rect:Rectangle):ByteArray;
	@:require(flash10) public function getVector (rect:Rectangle):Vector<UInt>;
	
	@:require(flash10) public function histogram (hRect:Rectangle = null):Vector<Vector<Float>>;
	public function hitTest (firstPoint:Point, firstAlphaThreshold:UInt, secondObject:Object, secondBitmapDataPoint:Point = null, secondAlphaThreshold:UInt = 1):Bool;
	public function lock ():Void;
	public function merge (sourceBitmapData:BitmapData, sourceRect:Rectangle, destPoint:Point, redMultiplier:UInt, greenMultiplier:UInt, blueMultiplier:UInt, alphaMultiplier:UInt):Void;
	public function noise (randomSeed:Int, low:UInt = 0, high:UInt = 255, channelOptions:UInt = 7, grayScale:Bool = false):Void;
	public function paletteMap (sourceBitmapData:BitmapData, sourceRect:Rectangle, destPoint:Point, redArray:Array<Int> = null, greenArray:Array<Int> = null, blueArray:Array<Int> = null, alphaArray:Array<Int> = null):Void;
	public function perlinNoise (baseX:Float, baseY:Float, numOctaves:UInt, randomSeed:Int, stitch:Bool, fractalNoise:Bool, channelOptions:UInt = 7, grayScale:Bool = false, offsets:Array<Point> = null):Void;
	
	#if flash
	@:noCompletion @:dox(hide) public function pixelDissolve (sourceBitmapData:BitmapData, sourceRect:Rectangle, destPoint:Point, randomSeed:Int = 0, numPixels:Int = 0, fillColor:UInt = 0):Int;
	#end
	
	public function scroll (x:Int, y:Int):Void;
	public function setPixel (x:Int, y:Int, color:UInt):Void;
	public function setPixel32 (x:Int, y:Int, color:UInt):Void;

As you can see, these externs don’t come with documentation, which is why HaxeDevelop doesn’t display any. It still compiles because there’s a typedef at the bottom, but HaxeDevelop isn’t smart enough to follow that typedef.

If you change import flash.display.BitmapData to import openfl.display.BitmapData, the documentation will come back. But it’s really inconvenient to do that every time.

Supposedly, you can hide folders to make HaxeDevelop ignore them, but this simply doesn’t work.

You could exclude the entire extern folder from code completion, but there’s one serious problem with that.

github.com

openfl/openfl/blob/3.6.1/extern/openfl/display/BitmapData.hx#L580-L608


	/**
	 * Fills an image with pixels representing random noise.
	 * 
	 * @param randomSeed     The random seed number to use. If you keep all other
	 *                       parameters the same, you can generate different
	 *                       pseudo-random results by varying the random seed
	 *                       value. The noise function is a mapping function, not
	 *                       a true random-number generation function, so it
	 *                       creates the same results each time from the same
	 *                       random seed.
	 * @param low            The lowest value to generate for each channel(0 to
	 *                       255).
	 * @param high           The highest value to generate for each channel(0 to
	 *                       255).
	 * @param channelOptions A number that can be a combination of any of the
	 *                       four color channel values
	 *                      (<code>BitmapDataChannel.RED</code>,
	 *                       <code>BitmapDataChannel.BLUE</code>,
	 *                       <code>BitmapDataChannel.GREEN</code>, and
	 *                       <code>BitmapDataChannel.ALPHA</code>). You can use

This file has been truncated. show original

Problem is, the folder also contains the documentation. You want to exclude extern/flash while keeping extern/openfl.

Here is one way to do that: create an extern-flash folder alongside extern, and move extern/flash into there. Then add this tag to project.xml:

<source path="extern-flash" if="flash" unless="display" />

By the way, OpenFL may have fixed this since version 3.6.1. If you’re able/willing to update to OpenFL 4.1.0, that could be the simplest solution.

voec · September 11, 2016, 9:54am

Thank you for your reply.

Strangly though your suggestion still did not seem to fix it. I was a bit confused still because I always make sure to import via openfl.*.* like you said.

However I did find this, that when I create a new class like this

import openfl.display.BitmapData;

class NewClass
{
    public function new() 
    {
        var bitmap:BitmapData = new BitmapData(100, 100);
    }
}

the code completion works without a problem.

But when I make the class Extend another class (like the HaxePunk Entity class) it stops showing correctly.
This is definitely a HaxeDevelop problem, I’ll let them know.

Thanks for the help, still!