[racket] My PLT->Racket porting experience

Progress!  Executive summary: if your students are losing their test
results window, tell them to stop minimising it.

Quoth Robby Findler:
> On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Don Blaheta <dblaheta at monm.edu> wrote:
> > This reminds me of a related problem my students often run into: losing
> > the test case results. Â They see it because they all tend to maximise
> > the main window, so if they don't close or dock the test case window it
> > gets hidden, and it doesn't resurface the next time they click Run.[0] Â So
> > they get confused as to why "none of the test cases are failing". Â I've
> > learned that when they say this I need to look for the *absence* of the
> > phrase "All X tests passed!" in the interactions, which means there were
> > *some* failures and I have to go hunting for the window.
> >
> > I wouldn't want to see the test case window be sticky and impossible to
> > send to the back, but it would be nice if it always came to front when
> > you click Run and there are some failures.
> >
> > [0]Well, not always. Â Sometimes the window resurfaces, and I don't know
> > why. Â Usually not.
> 
> Sorry for the long delay in getting to this.
> 
> I'm not sure if this has been fixed already, but when I try this with
> simple programs I see the window reappearing every time and, as far as
> I can tell, there should not be any race-conditions or anything like
> that (at least I don't see anything suspicious in that direction).

I'm glad you prodded on this, because I just did some experimenting and
discovered that I had misattributed the problem---the problem was not
that they had maximised the main Racket window, but that they had
*minimised* the test results window.  Here are the steps to reproduce:

  Open DrRacket.
  
  Type (check-expect 4 5) in the definitions pane
  
  Click Run or hit Ctrl-T
  
  Click the button on the test results window to minimise it (undock it
  first if necessary).
  
  Click Run or hit Ctrl-T again

  Interactions pane goes straight to prompt (without reporting on
  passing/failing tests); test results window stays minimised.
  
This behaviour is OS-dependent; I see the issue on 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 in
Windows 7 (can't test 5.1 there, sorry), but I do *not* see the issue on
any of 5.0.1, 5.0.2, or 5.1 on Mac.

This explains why it seemed intermittent---not every student was
minimising the window (but most were).

-- 
-=-Don Blaheta-=-dblaheta at monm.edu-=-=-<http://www.monmsci.net/~dblaheta/>-=-
Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of
Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I'd like a cup of
coffee, please, with no cream." The waitress replies, "I'm sorry,
monsieur, but we're out of no cream.  How about with no milk?"