touchbar-plus

Better Atom touchbar support for Mac OSX
victorhqc
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touchbar-plus package

Add Touch-bar support for Atom.

Motivation

The touch-bar is an interesting interface in the MacBook, though sometimes feels a bit gimmicky. Why would someone use it since keyboard shortcuts exist? For simple shortcuts like ctrl-c doesn't make sense, people usually know those universally shortcuts. But have you looked at atom's shortcuts list? Every package can register new shortcuts. Just reading the list takes time, more so to memorize all of them.

There are some applications that use the touch-bar brilliantly, making it actually something useful. Those interfaces have some "awareness" about what's being used by the user. This package attempts to use the active Pane as a reference to show different things that might be useful at that moment.

This of course, is an iterative learning & development. This first release might feel a bit gimmicky, because maybe the touch-bar is just that, just a gimmick. But maybe it turns to be something useful, that I'll leave for you to decide.

Features

  • UI changes depending on the active pane.
  • Works out of the box (pre-made configurations).

Default Interfaces

Text Editor View

When active pane is the text editor.

Text editor touch-bar buttons

Buttons:

  • Toggle tree-view pane.
  • Navigate to the left (tab to the left).
  • Navigate to the right (tab to the right).
  • Toggle git pane.
  • Toggle command-palette.
  • Fold & Unfold code by levels.

Tree View

When active pane is the tree-view

Tree view touch-bar buttons

Buttons:

  • Toggle tree-view pane.
  • New file.
  • New folder.
  • Toggle git pane.
  • Toggle command-palette.
  • Rename active item.
  • Duplicate active item.

Git Pane

When active pane is the git "editor".

Git pane touch-bar buttons

Buttons:

  • Toggle tree-view pane.
  • Fetch remote.
  • Toggle github pane.
  • Toggle git pane.
  • Toggle command-palette.
  • Pull.
  • Push.

Settings Page

When settings page is open.

Settings touch-bar buttons

Buttons:

  • Navigate to core settings.
  • Navigate to editor settings.
  • Navigate to URI handling settings.
  • Navigate to keybindings settings.
  • Navigate to packages settings.
  • Navigate to themes settings.
  • Navigate to updates settings.
  • Navigate to install settings.

Unknown Page

When touchbar-plus is not sure which pane or page is displayed.

Unknown page buttons

Buttons:

  • Toggle tree-view pane.
  • Open file/project.
  • Open settings.
  • Toggle git pane.
  • Toggle command-palette.

The Future

In this first release, is not clear how to use the touch-bar. Feel free to propose ideas as issues. Interesting ideas and use-cases may be around the corner!

I know for sure some kind of configuration is gonna be needed. People will want to add/change/remove buttons and move them to their needs. This feature is a big task and right now I don't have the time to do it. Plus I want to release this package before that happens.

Development

First install dependencies & run initial build and compilation.

npm i
npm run build
 
# Now we need to build the octicons. 
# Please add the dependencies instructed here. 
# https://github.com/Automattic/node-canvas#compiling 
npm run build:octicons
 
# Make sure apm is installed 
https://flight-manual.atom.io/getting-started/sections/installing-atom/
apm rebuild

Then for regular development

DEBUG=1 npm run build:watch

And open Atom in development mode

atom --dev .

Then, to check if the changes are working, just refresh the atom window: "Command Pallette" -> "Window: Reload".