Rolling Your Own Script Editor

Question

Does anyone know if there is a way in a window you've developed on your
own to access Forte's "compile" logic? Have a TextEditField and would
like the stuff in it to be compiled.
Curtis Marsden
[email protected]

Answer 1

If we are making a text-editor wish list, let me add my two cents worth --
How about text-sensitive help - when you do f1, look up the word under the
cursor, and if it is found, automatically position to that topic in the
help file. And as long as we are talking about help, how about more
example syntax, suitable for cutting and pasting?
I do like Forte's search and replace feature, with the little check-boxes,
but wish that it would find all references, not just those in methods. I
got nailed once changing an attribute or method name (I forget which) that
was also referenced in a virtual attribute. The code broke, and it was
pretty hard to track down why.
Beyond that, I would echo ALL of Richard's suggestions. If I were to pick
the one or two points that I would consider most important, it would be
these: Using color to highlight key words and comments in the methods; and
using a treeview with projects, classes, and methods to simplify navigation
of the project hierarchy.
--Jeanne
======================================================
Jeanne Hesler <[email protected]>
MSF&W Software, Product Development
[phone] ext 207
http://www.msfw.com
======================================================
/\ Imaging Developer - the only imaging product
\/ integrated into the Forte Development Environment
======================================================
From: Richard Stobart <[email protected]>
To: Don Nelson <[email protected]>; Thomas Mercer-Hursh, Ph.D.
<[email protected]>
Cc: Forte Users <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Rolling your own script editor
Date: Sunday, March 29, 1998 6:45 AM
I think the point is that the editing in Forte is archaic. Someone (andwe
all are looking directly at Forte themselves) needs to provide a user
friendly development environment.
Useful features that are on all successful IDE's built in the later partof
the century are:
Text highlighting - This doesn't even work properly in V3F. Tryshift-down
past a long line.
Context highlighting or colours - Type a reserved word and it appears in
bold would be a good start.
Search - What is that greyed out cancel button for?
Search - I am reading someone's code and they are calling a method on anSO.
How do I quickly find where that method is?
Layout - What about a tree view of Projects, Classes and
Methods/Attributes - Double click on the method and go directly there. Take
a look at MSVC for a useable interface.
'How do I?' on help.
Why is it necessary to keep going to the web to look for tech support?
Can't that be added to Help.
Object ID's - all or nothing. Try changing an object's name. All the
function prototypes change - none of the code changes - brokeneverywhere.
If there was a descent Search and Replace (Would you like to replacethis?
And the text in your function prototype, Would you like to replace this
too?) this would be vaguely acceptable.
I could go on but I won't.
Regards
Richard Stobart
Consultant, ECSoft, UK
101 Wigmore Street
London W1H 9AA
[phone]
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Nelson <[email protected]>
To: Thomas Mercer-Hursh, Ph.D. <[email protected]>
Cc: Forte Users <[email protected]>
Date: 29 March 1998 01:49
Subject: Re: Rolling your own script editor
You probably could, but it would very likely "break" with future
versions
of Forte. Not recommended at this time.
Don
At 03:32 PM 3/27/98 -0800, Thomas Mercer-Hursh, Ph.D. wrote:
At 09:45 PM 3/27/98 +0000, Alfred Scholldorf wrote:
No, but Wow would that be a cool feature!
Does anyone know if there is a way in a window you've developed on
your
own to access Forte's "compile" logic? Have a TextEditField andwould
like the stuff in it to be compiled.
[email protected]
Also potentially quite interesting would be the option to use optional
editors in place of any standard one. I have been very impressed, for
example, with ED4W and its ability to recognize syntax, use color to
highlight syntactically relevent areas, and provide typing shortcutswhich
can pop in whole language segments in response to a few keystrokes. They
haven't done a Forte language template yet, but they do provide all the
tools necessary to do one and they have provided the capability withmany
other languages to hand the current buffer to a compiler, collect the
errors, and then return to ED4W with errors marked. I don't know howeasy
it would be to get it to interface with the repository, but I don't seewhy
this should be that difficult.
=========================================================================
Thomas Mercer-Hursh, Ph.D email:
[email protected]
Computing Integrity, Inc. sales: 510-233-9329
550 Casey Drive - Cypress Point support: 510-233-9327
Point Richmond, CA 94801-3751 fax: [phone]
============================================
Don Nelson
Regional Consulting Manager - Rocky Mountain Region
Forte Software, Inc.
Denver, CO
Phone: [phone]
Corporate voice mail: 510-986-3810
aka: [email protected]
============================================
"Until you learn to stalk and overrun, you can't devour anyone" - Hobbes