[racket] Survey for DrRacket users related to automatic parentheses behavior

Nadeem, hello.

On 2012 Nov 23, at 00:20, Nadeem Abdul Hamid <nadeem at acm.org> wrote:

> 1. Do you use the automatic parentheses feature of DrRacket?

No, because this feature wasn't present.

(I didn't realise until this thread that there was supposed to be a M-( and M-) function, though I can't seem to enable this in DrRacket (5.3 on OS X), even when I enable 'Treat command key as meta'.

> 2a. If yes, does the proposal above resonate well with you? 
> 2b. And, do you think this "smart skipping" of auto-inserted closing parentheses should become the intrinsic behavior of the automatic parentheses mode, or should it be a separate preference? (i.e. have two preference options - the current automatic parentheses one and then a subordinate option that enables/disables this skipping over of auto-inserted closing parentheses as the user types them)

I think it should become intrinsic, because I don't see much point in an automatic-parenthesis mode which doesn't have this functionality.  Going further, I'm not sure there's much point in _not_ having the smart-skipping behaviour, even as an option.

I normally use Emacs for writing code, unless it's something on the edge of my  understanding, where I feel I need the extra help DrRacket can provide.  I switch between languages quite a bit (ie not just Schemes) so it seems more convenient for me to stick to one editor rather than multiple IDEs, even if they're individually better for a particular language.

The lack of M-(, M-), C-M-u, C-M-f, C-M-b, C-M-k and friends is one thing that's frustrated my occasional forays into "I really should learn more about the wonders of DrRacket… oh dear, I seem to have lost the ability to type".  It's only on those forays that I discover how wedded I've become to a few emacs keystrokes. It feels reeeeeeaalllly weird moving around code, and especially Scheme, with the mouse and arrow keys.

> 3. If your answer to #1 is "No", why not? (Is it because you find its current behavior awkward in some way?)

See above.

All the best,

Norman


-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK