Created attachment 66764 [details]
screenshot

Personally I don't understand who wants to go to this tab and want to change anything. And even if I go to this page, I
have no idea what can I expect from this change. Do we want this tab at all?

In case we want this tab, it is not editor issue. Debugger, profiler, bpel and probably other modules added their
annotations...

>  Do we want this tab at all?
Well, it's fairly useless in it's current state. But it is the only way how to tweak annotation colors in case you need
to. And because of issue #68551 (Annotations is not bound to Fonts&Colors profile) you may really need to if you are
unlucky enough to use a coloring scheme that is too different from the default one.

I understand that people perceive annotations as a part of the editor, but in fact all these annotations come from
'other' modules. Most of them from debugger (breakpoints, all the program counter annotations), profiler, some from java
and other modules. This may actually prove too hard to clean up for 6.5, but we should certainly address it somehow. If
not for 6.5 then after that.

I agree this dialog is rather useless in it's current form. The following problems should be fixed: 

1) Same names of annotations (impossible to differentiate them) or names not reflecting a state of an annotation (i.e
disabled breakpoint should have an icon of a disabled breakpoint and its name should be "Breakpoint (disabled)", not
just "Breakpoint"

2) Multiple annotations of the same type provided by different modules. 
I assume there are so many breakpoint entries because they are registered by different debuggers. There should be only
be one breakpoint entry (or maybe several for different states - enabled, disabled, broken..) and if it's color was
changed, it would affect appearance in all debuggers.

3) Some icons are obsolete. Most icons have IMO been redesigned and can be found at
http://xdesign-tools.czech.sun.com/visualdesign/prehled_rebranding/index.html . Let me know if something can not be
found or if there is a need for any other icons. Namely,  

4) There is no possibility of previewing the changes. I.e. user has to go back&forth to the editor to set the appearance
of annotations which makes the overall flow very awkward. 

5) Some names have too little informative value or make no sense at all (what is "Notice" or even "..." ? ).

I'm not sure where to assign .. maybe a rotating issue? 

Perfect candidate for bug waiver process.
1) This issue is there from the beginning of NetBEans.
2) Not easy to fix. We should change API, and. Or more exact, we should delete current implementation and write it once
again.
3) It affect too many modules (editor, core, debugger...)

So I am asking to waive it.

Complete rewrite should fix following usecases:
1) Annotations is not bound to Fonts&Colors profile
2) Avoid duplicating of same items and obsolete icons.

*** Issue 68551 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

> Personally I don't understand who wants to go to this tab and want to change anything

Well, people won't be doing that. The point is that when I select the "Norway Today" color scheme most of the annotation
colors clash, making the text impossible to read while you're debugging, etc. Ideally once this issue is fixed "Norway
Today" will have its own set of annotation colors which work well with that color scheme.

Umm, I'm not sure if I am happy with duplicating #68551 to this issue. The main reason is that #68551 is a specific
issue describing a specific problem with clear and understandable solution. This issue on the other hand is vague,
leading to potentially a long discussion and hopefully series of changes. I would prefer reopening #68551 and making
this issue depend on #68551. Then, when we distill other specific issues from the 'Annotations are in mess' statement we
can add them in the same way and fix them one by one. Opinions...

+1 on reopening issue 68551

It would be very helpful to get annotation information stored alongside the languages they go with - both for the usability of the dialog, and also to make 
creating/exporting alternate color profiles more realistic (right now annotation colors have to look good with any color scheme, and if the schemes for 
different document types differ, that's not going to happen).

Tim, Vita: #68551 is only a part of bigger issue with annotations, I think. There is some serious improvements on the
API side needed, see #143721.

Hmm, at the beginning we knew that annotation colors are not part of a coloring profile (#68551). Now we know the same
plus that there are too many duplicate annotations and this knowledge is spread across #143145, #143721 and #143716,
which all look like duplicates to me. But I probably don't understand your intentions here...

I will try to explain it:
#143145 is UI issue covering all current UI issues that can not be fixed because of API insufficiency. I prefer having
one issue covering all usecases, because all usecases are caused by one problem: APIs

#143721: this issue is about APIs only. I feel that we need P2 bug for this purpose. Problem with annotations is there
for really LONG time, and nobody cares. Se we need some "motivation". And annotation issues are not "RFE.

#143716: is debugger specific issue. Some porblems with annotations are fixable even in the current APIs, so I am trying
to imrove current state for nb6.5. (#143145 & #143721 are not fixable for 6.5, so they are waived).

Is there a plan to fix this pile of issues at some point?  It would be nice to have user-sharable, exportable color
schemes, and annotations that are readable with dark-background schemes, and that's waiting on these issues.

Marking to be fixed in 7.0 preliminarily.

Requires major API rewrite.

http://wiki.netbeans.org/IssueLifeCycle#section-IssueLifeCycle-EvaluatingIssues
LATER also this resolution can't be used for bugs with P1,P2 priority

BTW: I think it should be fixed for 7.0, this is mess and I do not think anybody can really use it

I dislike this behavior too. But on the other hand fixing this issue means a BIG changes in APIs and impl., a lot of
work, and user impact is limited. How many users are really changing colors of annotations? And we have two P2 for this
issue.
>it is really next or later for me...

"How many users are really changing colors of annotations?"

Changing color profiles is useless without this feature. Ever try debugging with the "Norway Today" profile? You'll go
blind :) Until you fix this issue you are implying that users may use the default color scheme and nothing else.

Please read
http://wiki.netbeans.org/BugPriorityGuidelines
and you will find that this is exactly "Part of a product feature is affected, a viable workaround exists" (change
colors) and "Highly visible usability problem" and "Font, color is hard-coded" (all listed under P3 category). You find
nothing in P1 or P2 section that would be related to this bug.

> this is exactly "Part of a product feature is affected, a viable workaround exists"

What is the "viable workaround" then? I mean - I can try all possibilities until it works as I want, but it doesn't seem
to be too viable to me from the usability point of view.

I don't like the approach of rigidly applying priority guidelines, which I did when I came to NetBeans and we ended up
with like 15 P1 issues about missing accessible description for dialog some one month before release (guidelines changed
since then - I wish I could say I did it;))... We would have to have much finer granularity of the issue priority
(priority/severity, 1..7, lets say), we would have to introduce and apply qualitative indicators for issues (priority is
quantitative factor only, but it doesn't say anything about the real nature of an issue) etc. It is better/cheaper/more
efficient to use a common sense IMO.

fixed in jet-main: http://hg.netbeans.org/jet-main/rev/73133baa2c28

Duplicate annotation names are fixed, some annotations removed.
No architectural changes planned.

Integrated into 'main-golden', will be available in build *201004240200* on http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/nightly/ (upload may still be in progress)
Changeset: http://hg.netbeans.org/main/rev/73133baa2c28
User: Jan Jancura<jjancura@netbeans.org>
Log: #143145: Annotations list in Tools | Options is mess

Verified in NetBeans 6.9 (Build 201005122200)