[racket-dev] open untagged files in blank language level?

On Oct 7, 2011, at 4:27 AM, Robby Findler wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 10:37 PM, Stephen Bloch <bloch at adelphi.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Oct 6, 2011, at 4:35 PM, "John Clements" <clements at brinckerhoff.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> If there's any disagreement, it's about what should happen when an existing file--specifically, one that doesn't begin with #lang--is opened. Unless I'm missing something, this means that the only time students will have to "re-select" the language level is when they download a file that's intended to be evaluated in a student language, but that doesn't have a #lang line in it. Right?
>>> 
>>> In my particular case, I had a program for students that reads in a rhythm from a text file.  The problem was that when students opened this text file in a drracket editor and changed it a bit and saved it, all of a sudden their rhythms came out as incredibly bizarre, because of the hidden first lines of the text file.
>> 
>> How about this: when you open an existing file that has no prologue or #lang, it opens in "text mode": the Check Syntax and Run buttons are both disabled.
> 
> Another possibility: it could open in the 'not a language' language
> that you get if this is the first time you've started drracket (if it
> has been a while since you've seen this mode, you can move your
> preferences out of the way and restart drracket to see it again).

Yes, this would definitely have avoided the problem my students encountered. I like this proposal.

John 

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