<div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>To me DrRacket (and prev. DrScheme) is the only IDE I have tried that really appealed to me, much thanks to its minimalistic GUI. If that makes it look lika a toy, then it's a good thing in my book.</div> <div><br></div><div>Only thing I am really missing is GUI support for defining my own keybindings (I never had much luck with defining my own keybindings). Now I haven't hacked any racket for a while, so things may have improved in this respect without my knowledge.</div> <div><br></div><div>Raoul, DrRacket is a bit different from other IDEs, but it does not necessarily make it worse. Give it a little more time and you may become accustomed to it's way and even start to like it.</div><div> <br></div><div>cheers</div><div>/Johan</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/11/13 Eli Barzilay <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:eli@barzilay.org">eli@barzilay.org</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> <div class="im">20 minutes ago, Raoul Duke wrote:<br> > (a) oh based on previous experience, i expect you of all people to<br> > be blunt! so i don't mind at all! :-)<br> <br> </div>I'll do that.<br> <br> > where i'm coming from: [...]<br> <br> No relevance, except:<br> <br> > i'm using [...] mac os x. (at home i use that or linux since<br> <div class="im">> my xp box is dead.<br> <br> </div>OK.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * it doesn’t look like a native app, so it is very off-putting<br> > and has unsettled me from the get-go.<br> <br> </div>This used to be the case for linux only, before the gui rewrite, and<br> since then it looks native on all plaforms including linux. (And that<br> includes the gtk file dialog that I detest.) But to make it useful,<br> you'll need to get *specific* points across. This:<br> <div class="im"><br> > even just the basic app menus aren’t remotely native-app looking.<br> > this looks like something that was hacked up in tk circa 1987 or<br> > some other "i purport to be cross-platform but really i'm just stab<br> > in the eye on all platforms rather than something that feels cozy at<br> > home on each platform." yes, i know cross-platform is really,<br> > really hard.<br> <br> </div>has zero useful content. I'm not the DrRacket developer, but had I<br> been, there is nothing in the above that I see as useful in fixing<br> whatever it is that bothers you.<br> <br> [On the meta side of inflammatory posts: like Shriram, I find this<br> borderline trolling. Unlike your text, I can specify exactly why: you<br> use strong language like "stab in the eye" and "bad taste in my<br> mouth". Yet you have not justified this in any concrete way, so I<br> find it surprising that something would be equivalent to a stabbed<br> eye, yet it's vague enough to not come with an explicit explanation.<br> For all I know, that's all because some box on the screen didn't have<br> round corners at the same radius or something similar.]<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * it seems to be serving too many different audiences out of the<br> > box. having to choose a language is pretty confusing.<br> <br> </div>Yes, that's a good -- and known -- point. The default language should<br> be the "detect language in source", but that can confuse newbies who<br> use the student languages so it's not the default, yet, mostly because<br> there isn't a clear way to improve it.<br> <div class="im"><br> > is dr. racket aimed first at top-level PLT folks who grok<br> > multi-lingual stuff? i think that should be more ‘advanced’ and thus<br> </div>> hidden. [...]<br> <br> It is. At the stage of not being aware of the "multi-lingual stuff",<br> you just need to write "#lang racket" and be done with it. The<br> default behavior of the "detect language in source" does just that.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * killer bad: when i evaluate code from the top pane, my cursor<br> > gets moved to the bottom pane and i have to manually get it back up<br> > top to edit my program.<br> <br> </div>I'd say two things about this: (a) you're admittedly using lispish<br> languages very little -- and what drracket does is something that most<br> of the people who do use it expect as the default. I wrote my code<br> and now I want to try things out. (b) There are cases where I want to<br> just run the code to see that there were no errors etc -- but that<br> boils down to a feature request to get a second key (maybe C-S-r?)<br> that will leave the focus in whatever window you were at. Such a key<br> makes sense, but if that'll make you happy than I'd argue that "killer<br> bad" is a huge exaggeration.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * killer bad: clicking on Check Syntax<br> > * changes the ui drastically and i have no idea how to get<br> > back to how it was before i clicked it.<br> <br> </div>How does it change the UI? FWIW, I see two things: an error popping<br> up if there is one, and colors changing. Both are part of what I<br> expect it to do. The only thing that I'd complain about here is the<br> "check syntax" name, which makes it seem like some trivial tool in one<br> of the mainstream language where "check the syntax" is a trivial<br> functionality. But I don't have a good idea for a better name, and<br> "check syntax" has been around for a really long time so it became<br> it's own kind of term in the racket world.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * also there were no visible results of clicking it, no<br> > report card, no “ok” even. i had (+ 3 2) as the program.<br> <br> </div>I suspect that this is the same as above. (Confusing it for something<br> it is not.) I know that if DrRacket changes to pop up some "Your<br> syntax checks fine!" it would be much less useful for me.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * doing (+ 3 z) at least hilighted the z, but that was a<br> > really small thing and hard to see and hard to know what it means<br> > and what to do with it and where to go from there. the ui is not<br> > showing me what to do.<br> <br> </div>Sounds like you're seeing something different than what I see. I get<br> the "z" with a red background, which in the year that I live at (2011)<br> is a universal sign of "something bad happened". In case the red bg<br> is unclear, I also get an error message at the top of the screen, with<br> the error that happened. It even says "Check Syntax Error Message" on<br> the left so I know where it came from. Finally, the cursor is right<br> next to the offending "z", so my UI is really trying to show me that I<br> need to do something there to fix the error.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * hovering over the hilighted z does nothing.<br> <br> </div>I guess that it could show something, but since there is the error<br> window at the top I don't know what else could be shown there.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * at this point, basically literally 5 or 7 minutes into using<br> > it, i’m ready to throw it out. the system is apparently utterly<br> > unhelpful, and seems to really try to lead me down various crazy<br> > garden paths of doom.<br> <br> </div>This goes on with the strong language: "utterly unhelpful" seems<br> awfully strong for having one and a half very minor complaints that I<br> can extrapolate from the above.<br> <div class="im"><br> <br> > * like, i guess i have to quit the entire app and start it again<br> > to get the 2 pane format back? [oh i guess i can "run" it again to<br> > get it back at least.]<br> <br> </div>Um, I have to admit that I run into similar problems with applications<br> that I don't know. In such cases I a menu named "View" is something<br> that looks very promising in rectifying whatever it is that I want to<br> view. Did you try that?<br> <span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br> --<br> ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay:<br> <a href="http://barzilay.org/" target="_blank">http://barzilay.org/</a> Maze is Life!<br> </font></span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br> _________________________________________________<br> For list-related administrative tasks:<br> <a href="http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users" target="_blank">http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users</a></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>