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 Visual Assist Prevents Typing Commas and Periods

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T O P I C    R E V I E W
jdimatteo Posted - Mar 11 2015 : 11:11:16 AM
Sometimes when editing C++ COM files with things like STDMETHOD/STDMETHODIMP, Visual Assist prevents typing comma and period characters.

I am not sure how to reproduce yet, but currently I'm seeing the following behavior:

1. with cursor in open parentheses of a function call, typing a comma ',' has no effect. e.g. I'm typing "foo(abc" and trying to type a comma so I can enter the next argument and there is no effect. I also noticed that the period '.' key doesn't work, but other characters like letters and question mark '?' work.
2. disable VAssist (VAssistX > Enable/Disable)
3. Now keyboard resumes working normally, i.e. commas and periods type as expected
4. enable VAssist (VAssistX > Enable/Disable)
5. commas/periods not working again -- in exactly same state as 1. can enable/disable VAssist repeatedly with same behavior

This is depressing.




From the About Visual Assist Box:

VA_X.dll file version 10.9.2059.0 built 2015.02.11
DevEnv.exe version 11.0.61030.0 Professional
msenv.dll version 11.0.61030.0
Comctl32.dll version 6.10.7601.17514
Windows 7 6.1 Build 7601 Service Pack 1
32 processors (x86-64, WOW64)
Language info: 1252, 0x409

This is Visual Studio 2012 Professional (English), with Intellisense disabled, and "Get content from default Intellisense" unchecked on the Listboxes page of the VA Options.
19   L A T E S T    R E P L I E S    (Newest First)
feline Posted - Apr 13 2016 : 11:35:21 AM
SteUK, Can you please go to:

VA Options -> System Info -> Copy Info

and paste the details (from the clipboard) into your reply. This will give us the basic information about your setup.

You should not be seeing problems like this, obviously, and I will do everything I can to help find out what is happening here, and help you to fix this. Trying to figure out what is causing the problems is where we need to start.

You can download older versions of VA from this page:

http://www.wholetomato.com/support/history.asp
SteUK Posted - Apr 13 2016 : 06:25:43 AM
Hi,

I am also experiencing this issue. I have followed the advice and, whilst deleting the two files helps initially, the problem keeps returning.

I have had no input of . and , but also suffered Alt+G not working as well as the 'show functions/members' dialog reverting to the VS2015 one when I am allowed to use the . character!

Is there an older version I can revert to as this is frankly unusable as things stand. I am just spending more time frustrated than enjoying my hobby.

Best,
Ste

EDIT 1: I have reverted back to build 2086...will let all know how I get on :-/
feline Posted - Feb 02 2016 : 8:16:16 PM
The IDE will recreate both the .SUO and and .SDF files if you delete them. The SDF file holds the intellisense database for the solution. I am not quite sure what the SUO file is for, but it looks like the open tabs from the last time you opened the solution are at least part of its content.

I am glad this helped fix your problem, and hope that it stays fixed.
Aragorn Posted - Jan 29 2016 : 3:54:34 PM
quote:
Originally posted by accord

ajb: were you able to solve the problem? (e.g. by deleting the .suo file or by rebuilding VA symbol databases)



Awesome, I deleted the .suo file and everything is working again like magic. Thanks. I just hope nothing bad is going to happen now I've deleted the file.
ajb Posted - Aug 24 2015 : 2:17:05 PM
I missed the part about deleting the .suo file (.atsuo with Atmel Studio) when I first came across this thread, but that has fixed the problem in two different projects now, so thanks very much for that suggestion.
accord Posted - Aug 17 2015 : 4:17:44 PM
ajb: were you able to solve the problem? (e.g. by deleting the .suo file or by rebuilding VA symbol databases)

jbrauer: I'm glad rebuilding solved the problem, and I hope it stays this way.

If either of you experiences the problem again, can you please try enabling logging, reproduce the problem, and send the log files in?
http://docs.wholetomato.com/default.asp?W305

Please send the log files in using the below form:
http://wholetomato.com/support/contact.asp

Please include the URL of this topic in the "Your Request" field, so we can match it up.
jbrauer Posted - Aug 17 2015 : 07:13:23 AM
This problem cropped up for me today, and deleting my user options (suo, right?) file did not help.

I noticed that the suggestions/autocomplete did not show up near the cursor, and if I accepted the limited options it gave me, it would put THOSE in the file that was already taking all my "."s!

Anyway, it appears that a VA rebuild from the options menu has solved my problem. For now.
jbrauer Posted - Aug 06 2015 : 09:33:38 AM
Just want to throw my experience with this issue into the fray.

Today this issue cropped up for me while working on a Unit Test file. Specifically, only the "." key would not type where my cursor was. It always typed into another open source document. Additionally, in the main source file, I was unable to get any kind of suggestion menu to popup while I was typing. It worked fine in other files, just not the main.

Restarting Visual Studio did not seem to help, but the problem disappeared when I turned off visual assist.

I installed an update, and realized I was on a trial license. So I put in the product key I had gotten, but didn't enter(duh). This seems to have solved my problem.

I'll be keeping an eye on this problem for the time being and plan to come back here if it happens again.

Thanks!
jdimatteo Posted - Jul 27 2015 : 2:00:34 PM
ajb, did you try deleting your .suo file (you should close Visual Studio first, and you might want to back up the .suo file before deleting it)? Deleting my project's .suo file resolved the strange input errors for me.
ajb Posted - Jul 27 2015 : 11:48:32 AM
Just wanted to add, the extensions currently installed here, in case they help, are:

-Atmel ARM GNU Toolchain
-Atmel ACR (32 bit) GNU Toolchain
-Atmel AVR (8 bit) GNU Toolchain
-Atmel Gallery
-Atmel Kits
-Atmel Software Framework
-Atmel Toolchain Provider
-AVR macro Assembler
-GdbConsole
-LiveWatch
-MemoryLogger
-Percepio Trace for Atmel Studio
-Terminal for Atmel Studio
-Visual Assist for Atmel Studio
-Visual Studio Color Theme Editor

With the exception of the Terminal and Theme Editor extensions (without which I've still experienced this problem), these are all included out-of-the-box with Atmel Studio.
ajb Posted - Jul 27 2015 : 11:35:10 AM
Hi,

I just stumbled across this thread after having a similar problem. I'm using Atmel Studio 6.2, which is based on Visual Studio (although I'm not sure which VS version) and comes with VassistX built in. I've been having the same problem with not being able to type certain characters intermittently for quite some time, and only just now made the connection with VAssistX, which lead me here.

I've had this problem with different characters in different files in different projects on different computers, and have seen other references to this problem among other Atmel Studio users, so it's clearly a more widespread problem. Perhaps there's something about Atmel Studio in particular that makes it manifest more frequently than in vanilla Visual Studio.

In any case, I have a C project that includes a header file that routinely exhibits problems with typing an opening paren or a comma. The comma simply doesn't appear, and attempting to type an opening paren just moves the cursor to the left by one character. I can copy and paste those characters into place with no problem (other than that being a giant pain). Restarting Atmel Studio fixes the problem temporarily, but it always comes back. Other files in the same project don't exhibit this problem. My only thought is that maybe since this header file is chock full of #defined constants and macros that VAssistX is getting confused by the syntax, but I've had this problem in source files as well.

I've tried turning various VAssistX settings on and off, but the only thing that seems to help is disabling it entirely, at which point the problem goes away. Re-enabling it makes the problem come back.
feline Posted - Apr 20 2015 : 1:23:21 PM
Thank you for the update. A corrupt SUO file would certainly cause all sorts of problems, so I can well believe it was causing most or all of your problems. I just hope this stays fixed for you.

Obviously if you have any further questions or problems please let us know and I will do everything I can to help.
jdimatteo Posted - Apr 20 2015 : 12:40:16 PM
> what extensions are listed on you system?

I have the same extensions you listed, plus 5 python related ones: 1) Python Tools for Visual Studio, 2) Python Tools for Visual Studio - Django, 3) Python Tools for Visual Studio - Interactive, 4) Python Tools for Visual Studio - IronPython, and 5) Python Tools for Visual Studio - Profiling. I also have Intel Parallel Studio XE 2015 extensions installed (e.g. Intel Inspector) which strangely aren't listed here.

Since my last post I haven't had a typing problem, but I started getting a lot of Visual Studio crashes and slowdowns with "Microsoft Visual Studio is Busy" popups. Debugging was also failing to show any variable values. So I reset all settings like you instructed. I also deleted my solution's .suo file and did VA Options -> Performance -> Rebuild.

The typing error so far hasn't occurred and VS stability/responsiveness seems good now.

I suspect that deleting the .suo file had the biggest help and that this problem was just Visual Studio messed up and not really VA's fault.
feline Posted - Apr 16 2015 : 6:48:15 PM
Apologies for this, this should never happen, and you seem to be the only person this is happening to. The fact it started up again after installing the new build of VA suggests something to do with IDE extensions, VA or some other extension.

If you look at:

IDE Tools menu -> Extensions and Updates...

what extensions are listed on you system? On a full install of VS2012 Update 4 with VA I have the following extensions listed:

Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows 8.1
Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone 8.1 XAML
Microsoft AST.NET and Web Tools
NuGet Package Manager
Visual Assist
Visual Studio Extensions for Windows Library for JavaScript

Reinstalling the IDE seems like a big step, but you are clearly having problems.

First I would suggest exporting your IDE and VA settings, for safe keeping:

VA Options -> Performance -> Export Settings
IDE tools menu -> Import and Export Settings -> Export selected environment settings

and then using:

IDE tools menu -> Import and Export Settings -> Reset all settings

to see if this helps.
jdimatteo Posted - Apr 16 2015 : 5:25:09 PM
I just upgraded to the latest VA version this morning and starting getting typing problems again for the first time since my last post.

Again, the problem seems to be with special characters, but this time the text is appearing on the wrong line. Perhaps this was happening last time too, and I just didn't have the wrong line in view.

You can see my cursor on line 271. I was typing there, and characters like "abcderfbb" appeared correctly there, but periods always appeared on the wrong line 268. Parentheses and brackets seemed somewhat random in which line they appeared on, but perhaps there is a pattern with opening always on wrong line and closing always on correct line.



Would minidumps while it is happening or screenshots help you diagnose this? I have had a lot of Visual Studio problems -- do you think I should re-install visual studio? I don't really care that is happening once a month (hopefully it doesn't start happening more frequently).

Restarting VS resolved the problem again. I don't know how to reproduce this. This time the .cpp file seems normal and doesn't have strange STDMETHOD/STDMETHODIMP stuff, so perhaps that was a red herring.




VA_X.dll file version 10.9.2062.0 built 2015.04.07
DevEnv.exe version 11.0.61030.0 Professional
msenv.dll version 11.0.61030.0
Comctl32.dll version 6.10.7601.17514
Windows 7 6.1 Build 7601 Service Pack 1
32 processors (x86-64, WOW64)
Language info: 1252, 0x409
feline Posted - Mar 11 2015 : 3:11:24 PM
Typing characters should always work, so I am not sure what happened here. Do you tend to keep the IDE loaded for several days at a time? I am looking for anything that might explain what happened here, since an IDE restart helped.

The text in the file should not be all black, but since typing was not working, its possible something was also going wrong with syntax colouring as well.

Is the problem with the listbox appearing in the wrong place common, or was this just a one off problem? It would make sense if these problems were somehow connected, but off hand I don't see why or how.

As for the IDE its self, it is trying to do a lot of different things, so with any very complex program there are going to be problems. Plus C++ is not the simplest language to handle. Still, you would hope that something as simple as being able to type would work reliably, all of the time. We don't have any current plans to try and offer our own IDE, it's a full time job keeping up with all of the Microsoft IDE's that we support, and the requests from our users
jdimatteo Posted - Mar 11 2015 : 1:47:32 PM
quote:
Does the VA colouring seem reasonable in this file? I am wondering if the file seems to be confusing our parser.


If I recall correctly, yes, before I restarted the IDE, the coloring of the function containing code I was trying to add a comma to was all black (no syntax highlighting) when the issue was happening. Also VA goto definition/implementation (Alt-G) wasn't working. Since I restarted the IDE, the coloring seems correct now and Alt-G is working.

I took the following screenshot when a VA context menu popped up in a strange unexpected location when I was trying to type commas/periods/etc with VA enabled. Notice that the cursor is in the bottom right, so the context menu in the top left seems odd. Here the syntax highlighting was correct, so either I misremembered it having no syntax highlighting or syntax highlighting turned off after I took the screenshot.

jdimatteo Posted - Mar 11 2015 : 1:33:48 PM
quote:
Having this option turned on has been known to trigger a problem like this on occasion.


The "Show Miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer" option is already off.

quote:
does this problem seem to be file specific?


Yes, this only happened on a particular file. It was reproducible even when I switched to other files and switched back to the problematic file. However, I just verified that after restarting the IDE the problem is no longer reproducible.

I guess it isn't really a big deal.

<begin rant>
Honestly, I blame Microsoft for making such a messed up IDE; I wish you guys would just make a full IDE that called MS's compiler via a command line interface or something, but I realize that might not be practical. I guess it is hard...XCode seems to be in a worse state. I don't understand why these proprietary IDEs have so many problems that open source IDEs like QTCreator and KDevelop don't have. Maybe you could join forces with JetBrains on their CLion IDE.
<end rant>
feline Posted - Mar 11 2015 : 1:18:16 PM
Apologies for this, clearly this should never happen.

Can you look and see if you have the IDE option:

IDE Tools menu -> Options -> Environment -> Documents -> Show Miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer

turned On or Off. If this is turned On can you please try turning it Off and see if this makes any difference.

Having this option turned on has been known to trigger a problem like this on occasion.

If this does not help, does this problem seem to be file specific?

Does the VA colouring seem reasonable in this file? I am wondering if the file seems to be confusing our parser.

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