Editor improvement suggestions

[RachelPun]

Hi,

It seems in the class expression editor, unlike the editor for bulk adding subclasses or subproperties, it's impossible to write multiple expressions at a time, is that right? Could you add this functionality? I think it can be quite helpful.

On top of that, allowing (shift +) enter/return (to do line break and) to confirm the entry rather than having to use the GUI button, would be great.

Thank you!

[mmopitz]

Hi,
your first suggestion would enhance my experience as well.

Since you have two suggestions let me split up my thoughts:

shift + return

On top of that, allowing (shift +) enter/return (to do line break and) to confirm the entry rather than having to use the GUI button, would be great.

On my machine (ubuntu 24.04, protege 5.65):

• enter/return adds a new line
• ctr + enter confirms the dialogue
• shift + enter does nothing

@RachelPun Does that not work for you? Does that suffice your needs? Or would you want shift + enter behave like ctr+ enter?

bulk edit

It seems in the class expression editor, unlike the editor for bulk adding subclasses or subproperties, it's impossible to write multiple expressions at a time, is that right? Could you add this functionality? I think it can be quite helpful.

I don't think there's a possibility to enter multiple expressions at a time, but I feel the pain.

I'm not sure how an implementation could look like.

Let's take the mentioned subclass editor as a basis: Each new line adds one more subclass.
In the class expression editor line breaks have currently no semantics, but they can be used to structure complex expressions (See screenshot below) . I don't think we would want to loose this functionality.
So I guess we would have to introduce some separator e.g. ; to separate multiple expressions.
That would again be inconsistent with e.g. the subclass editor. So I guess for a consistent experience we would have to add ; as a possible separator as well.

So I guess my proposal would be to add ; as a separator to both the class expression and other editors.
@RachelPun Do you think that would work for you?

Note: I have no idea how many editors would be affected by this change. Also I don't know how easy it is to get such a functionality into the expression editor with it's syntax highlighting/auto-completion feature.

Since this would greatly help me I would look into implementing this feature.
But first I would like to hear a maintainer's opinion on this.

[gouttegd]

But first I would like to hear a maintainer's opinion on this.

Protégé maintainer here.

I personally don’t think I would have a use for such a feature, but if you do and are willing to give a go at implementing it, by all means do it. :) I’ll review and test your PR, if it works and doesn’t break anything, I will have no objection to merging it.

[gouttegd]

So I guess we would have to introduce some separator e.g. ; to separate multiple expressions.

I would rather suggest , (comma), since that’s the character used to separate list items in OWL Manchester Syntax.