[plt-scheme] An Editors Tale

From: Paulo Jorge de Oliveira Cantante de Matos (pocm at netvisao.pt)
Date: Fri Jan 23 11:08:43 EST 2004

In the morning I wake up and start my Linux system, when I startx
DrScheme shows up and I continue coding what I left when I went to bed.
DrScheme after all is our eyes in to our scheme programming. When most
of us (ok, not those who use Emacs with MzScheme) think about
programming in Scheme they imagina a DrScheme window. It's incredible
how DrScheme is so good and so helpful with its very nice test suite and
help manuals always at hand however when it's time to go to bed I dream
about the same DrScheme with a different visual appearance and new
features. I can't understand why is (in my oppinion) so 'ugly'. Ok, it's
not DrScheme fault, but xWindows/wxxt or whatever. My question is: how
much wanted and how difficult it is to build a GTK or other GUI toolkit
DrScheme interface?  
AFAIK it seems pretty difficult since it seems DrScheme is so tightly
integrated into xWindows. Would MrEd API have to be rewritten?
I think a more professional look would not only help PLT Scheme to have
a wider audience outside universities but would also help those who
program in DrScheme. Features like automatic code generation for
classes, methods, getters and setters for example would be very, very
nice. A tabbed window with multiple files open would also be nice...
when I imagine this it's a little orgasmic. With such an IDE and Scheme
at my fingertips I think I would be able to sleep even better after a
hard day. :)

I would like thoughts about this...
With this post I don't mean DrScheme interface is trash, I like it very
much... consider my idea as a personal opinion of improvement.

Cheers,

-- 

Paulo J. Matos : pocm [_at_] mega . ist . utl . pt
Instituto Superior Tecnico - Lisbon
Computer and Software Eng. - A.I.
 - > http://mega.ist.utl.pt/~pocm
---
        -> God had a deadline...
                So, he wrote it all in Lisp!



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