[plt-scheme] comments on drscheme

At Tue, 20 Jul 2004 11:28:57 -0700, Shanon Fernald wrote:
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> 
> I have just discovered drscheme and find it to be a great interactive
> tool. I'm going through SCIP and typing all the examples and doing all
> the exercises in drscheme. This is really what an interactive
> environment should be like. It really reminds of the 'Query Analyzer'
> tool which I use for T-SQL development every day.
> 
> I was thinking it might be nice to see the following additions to it though:
> 
> 1. Have an option for automatic execute when focus is removed from the
> source code window. Basically whenever I click down to the interactive
> pane at the bottom I would like it to reload the source above. Then I
> can run my tests in the interactive window.

Have you tried using the shortcut (<menukey>-t)?

> 2. Break the interactive windows into a set of panes, like in query
> analyzer. One would be the interactive prompt, one would be the
> results, one would be error messages, maybe one for tasks,  one for
> profiling / code analysis, etc.

Something for us to think about, thanks.

> 3. The break / interrupt feature doesn't always seem to work well on
> my laptop. Hitting the break button should stop the running
> application smoothly and cleanly. Right now sometimes it is a
> challenge just to click it and then it can take some time for the
> interrupt to occur.

If you don't care to continue after breaking (and before the next
execute) use <menukey>-k to kill the execution. This works slightly
better than break, but if you are allocating *lots* of memory, you
still may have problems. We're working on that, tho.

> 4. Have a high resolution clock (as in query analyzer) that measures
> and displays the duration of a running function in milleseconds. Great
> for optimizations and such things. I use it all the time when writing
> t-sql queries. Why not for sorting algorithms too?

(time ...) times things in milliseconds, I believe.

> 5. Let the key bindings be customized. Some of the defaults are really
> strange choices and I would like to be able to customize many of the
> keys.

This is something that has been in the plans for sometime (many many
have asked for it) -- as soon as I get a rainy day, I'll do it..... I
promise!

Robby