[racket-dev] Feature suggestion

I think the earlier discussion was for a more ambitious feature than the one suggested below. This would be to fill in just a template of the arguments *after* the function name had already been entered. Would not involve searching for functions/methods applicable to a particular type. 
--- nadeem

On Jun 5, 2010, at 12:20 PM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:

> 
> We discussed this extensively a while a ago on this list in response to a comment by Simon Peyton Jones when he visited NEU for a few days -- Matthias
> 
> 
> 

> From: Paul Steckler <steck at stecksoft.com>
> Date: June 4, 2010 10:20:29 PM EDT
> To: dev at racket-lang.org
> Subject: [racket-dev] Feature suggestion
> 
> Over the past few months, I've had to spend a lot of time in Visual
> Studio (no comments from the
> peanut gallery, please!).  It has a feature that might be useful in
> DrRacket.  When you enter a
> class or class instance name followed by a dot, you get a popup of
> valid methods.  Yes, DrRacket
> has the name completion feature.  But after you enter one of the VS
> method names and an open
> paren, you get a signature (or often, many signatures due to a
> maddening number of overloads).
> As you type in arguments, the relevant part of the signature becomes
> bold-faced.
> 
> You really get addicted to this setup -- see the article "Does Visual
> Studio Rot the Mind?" by
> Charles Petzold.
> 
> Currently, DrRacket offers name completion and the ability to lookup
> names in Help Desk.
> That works, but it's a bit ungainly.  It would be ne plus ultra cool
> if when you entered
> 
>  (some-fun
> 
> you got a popup with the arguments to be entered.   If `some-fun' is
> in Help Desk, their arguments
> could have their names and types.  If `some-fun' is defined in the
> current file or require'd, you'd
> just have the argument names.  Ambitiously, if the argument had a
> corresponding predicate in a
> contract, you could show that.
> 
> -- Paul

> On Jun 4, 2010, at 10:47 PM, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> 
>> Perhaps also worth considering for inspiration is "elsoc", a useful hack that Emacs has had for arguments quick-reference.
>> 
>> "eldoc" does a transient display of the args to the innermost function/form that point is in.  This display appears in the ``echo area'' of the frame (roughly, status bar at the bottom of the window), so you can glance at it, but it doesn't get in your face while you're looking at the code and typing.
>> 
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Lisp-Doc.html
>> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ElDoc
>> 
>> I'm sure that DrRacket would do it not as a hack like "eldoc", but instead use some info that Check Syntax has. :)
>> 
>> Neil V.
>> 
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