[plt-scheme] Emacs modes and s-expression comments

On 16/02/06, Robby Findler <robby at cs.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> At Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:20:25 +0000, "Paulo J. Matos" wrote:
> > But right now, I do not quite recall if I got an answer to the following:
> > Why was DrScheme in the first place built on a WxWindows fork? Why was
> > the need to fork WxWidgets. AFAICT it got us arrested to an old
> > version which is today obsolete and that's why DrScheme is not
> > fancier, right?
>
> I think this one has been answered before by Matthew. Here's one
> answer:
>
> http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/mailarch/plt-scheme-2001/msg00936.html
>

Nice... :) Thanks for the search.

> but I thought he gave a fuller answer at some point. I can't find it in
> the archives, tho.
>
> On non-X platforms, DrScheme actually looks like other apps (or, could
> look like any of them if I had more time -- the platform's GUI library
> is well reflected in (lib "mred.ss" "mred"), certainly).
>

I only use DrScheme on X platforms, namely Linux, so I really don't
know how it looks like elsewhere... Still, those are at least not bad
news... for some people... DrScheme is not that ugly!

> I think that X has lagged behind a little bit, but Matthew put
> significant effort into that at some point in the 200 series, I
> believe.
>

Indeed, I started a thread some time ago exactly with that question in
mind and he did tell me that he worked on it. I think the differences
were obvious. The GUI improved a lot but obviously, we always want
more! :)

I've been thinking about the following, which I don't think it might
be hard but I'm not that sure. How hard would it be to implement, as 
tool,  an extra horizontal frame (like interactions for example) that
would show up real-time documentation for what you are currently
typing. Imagine you write "define", that would probably show you
define syntax and maybe some comments on it.

One of the difficulties would be to adjust the syntax shown to the
language the user is using. The syntax for define probably shift a bit
depending on the current language.

Still, a first step would be to have a tool that at any moment is able
to get what the user is typing. If it is in a cond expression, an if
expression etc, so that a function can then be called to show doc
about that.

Any comments if this is useful, on any todo list, etc?

Which difficulties would one have to face?

Cheers,

Paulo Matos

> Robby
>


--
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at sat inesc-id pt
Web: http://sat.inesc-id.pt/~pocm
Computer and Software Engineering
INESC-ID - SAT Group