[Tools>Board] and [Sketch>Include Library] split ridiculous long menus into sub-menus

[datenheim]

The menu list of the board-managerTools > Board menu is very (too?) long and scrolling in this menu is not convenient and seems to have (had) many bugs.

Indeed the Boards already are grouped by "Arduino AVR-Boards" etc.
These groups could/should simply be transformed to a submenu.

Thus boards are simpler and quicker to reach and scroll'n'search is reduced largely.
Also since list of boards is getting longer every day the current menu is not future proof.

Same may happen with the library managerSketch > Include Library menu. There also a grouping is existing and could be used.
Libraries not fitting into the three groups could get an own submenu.

I have only ESP32, ESP8266 and Micro/Mini/MegaCore Boardmanagers and even on FHD+ screen the menu is 3x longer as the screen. Scrolling really takes some time and simply the wrong solution to this problem.

Related to all versions up to 1.8.9 on Windows and afaik also on Linux.

[per1234]

@datenheim let me make sure I understand a couple of things:

When you say "board-manager", do you mean the contents of the Tools > Board menu? Boards Manager is something different (Tools > Board > Boards Manager...) so your terminology is not clear.

When you say "library manager", do you mean the contents of the Sketch > Include Library menu? Library Manager is something different (Sketch > Include Library > Manage Libraries... or Tools > Manage Libraries...).

Scrolling really takes some time and simply the wrong solution to this problem.

Although not what you're requesting, this issue will be somewhat alleviated via #8607

[datenheim]

Exactly, the Tools>Board menu is meant, sorry for being not exact in the first place.
Same is true for Sketch>Include Library.
Yes, the feature mentioned in #8607 presenting recently used boards (libraries) more prominently will fit nicely with my request. There could well be a first submenu showing the recently used objects.

[matthijskooijman]

For libraries, I implemented something similar in #1986, which divides puts libraries into submenus based on the current heading distinctions, as well as allowing them to be organized into subfolders under "libraries" (and these subfolders also cause submenus). The pull request was recently closed though, and was already quite outdated, but might still serve as inspiration in the future.