krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) (04/25/89)
From article <12565@lanl.gov>, by jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles): > One last point. I have a color computer a home. To me, having a > case sensitive language is as bad as having a _color_ sensitive one. > Can you imagine?!? Consider a program with 512 different variables, > all spelled "a". How would _YOU_ like to try to debug such a monster? I've talked to a couple of friends of mine about this. I have a color computer, too. I DEFINITELY DO NOT WANT COLOR SENSITIVE COMPILERS! Let me get that out of the way right of the bat! What I would like is the ability to change text styles, sizes, colors, and fonts within my code. I could, for example, have all my comments in a smaller point size than my code. Or I could make critical sections of code red. The code itself would still be just the text, and it would be trivial to return the code to its original monofont status, but the addition of optional style changes ould make some things really easy. One of my firends wants a comment font, so you don't need comment delimiters, but I think that's going a bit too far. I know, I know. It's silly. But it would be damn useful. To me anyway. Comments?? -- Jeff Erickson Claris Corporation | Birdie, birdie, in the sky, 408/987-7309 Applelink: Erickson4 | Why'd you do that in my eye? krazy@claris.com ames!claris!krazy | I won't fret, and I won't cry. "I'm a heppy, heppy ket!" | I'm just glad that cows don't fly.
john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) (04/26/89)
In article <9968@claris.com>, krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) writes: > From article <12565@lanl.gov>, by jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles): > > Consider a program with 512 different variables, > > all spelled "a". How would _YOU_ like to try to debug such a monster? > What I would like is the ability to change text styles, sizes, colors, and > fonts within my code. I could, for example, have all my comments in a smaller > point size than my code. Or I could make critical sections of code red. > The code itself would still be just the text... Comments?? One thing *I've* wanted is the ability include pictures in comments (for example, imagine feeding a MacWrite file to the Macintosh C compiler). The ability to include real drawings of box-and-pointer diagrams could immensely clarify some hairy pieces of code now and then. Occaisionally I have stooped to ASCII graphics, but somehow they just don't work as well. And then again, having fonts be significant in variable names would make it easy to have variables like "script-G" that pop up in Quantum Mechanics... (No, I am NOT serious. :-) -- John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (508) 626-1101 ...!decvax!frog!john, john@frog.UUCP, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw@eddie.mit.edu
gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) (04/26/89)
In article <9968@claris.com> krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) writes: >What I would like is the ability to change text styles, sizes, colors, and >fonts within my code. Some debuggers offer this to some degree. I've encountered (more than once) comments in C code that had to be run through [n]eqn|[nt]roff before they were intelligible to anyone other than a die-hard roffer. Of course if you have a decent text editor this is a piece of cake.
mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (04/26/89)
>What I would like is the ability to change text styles, sizes, colors, and >fonts within my code. I could, for example, have all my comments in a smaller >point size than my code. Or I could make critical sections of code red. There are examples of what you want - one is called WEB, invented by Donald Knuth (it is Pascal). It is the most God-awful mess ever invented. I do believe that what you want (or need) is a WYSIWYG system. It should sell great for the Mac. You might make a bundle. Doug McDonald
cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) (04/27/89)
In article <1318@frog.UUCP>, john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) writes: > In article <9968@claris.com>, krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) writes: > > From article <12565@lanl.gov>, by jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles): ........................ > And then again, having fonts be significant in variable names would make > it easy to have variables like "script-G" that pop up in Quantum Mechanics... > (No, I am NOT serious. :-) Why not? Mathematicians have been using fonts and foreign alphabets for hundreds of years without confusion. Just because at some stage in the development of computers only punch card symbols were available, and at the present time there is this atrocious attempt to limit us to the 63 characters which the 7-bit ASCII handles, we should give this up? We know how to use escape characters for those channels which are so limited. -- Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907 Phone: (317)494-6054 hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)
sho@pur-phy (Sho Kuwamoto) (04/28/89)
In article <1318@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) writes: >One thing *I've* wanted is the ability include pictures in comments (for >example, imagine feeding a MacWrite file to the Macintosh C compiler). >The ability to include real drawings of box-and-pointer diagrams could >immensely clarify some hairy pieces of code now and then. Occaisionally >I have stooped to ASCII graphics, but somehow they just don't work as well. If I ever wanted to do something like that, I would rather write a separate MacWrite document which explained the code, and put a reference to it in my code. Maybe it's a little less elegant, but I don't like the idea of making the C compiler more complicated and non-standard. The C compiler should just read in a text file. Different fonts and styles wouldn't be quite so bad, since you could use a regular text file with a resource which contained a style run. I suppose you could use the same kind of system to do pictures, keeping only the text in the data fork, and putting the picture information in resources, but even this seems kind of complicated. I don't know. It just seems kludgy. -Sho
suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) (04/28/89)
In article <1318@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) writes: >In article <9968@claris.com>, krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) writes: >> What I would like is the ability to change text styles, sizes, colors, and >> fonts within my code. I could, for example, have all my comments in a >> smaller point size than my code. Or I could make critical sections of >> code red. The code itself would still be just the text... Comments?? What is the ASCII value of a red 'a'? If the code isn't written in a portable character set, it is not a very portable program. Do we have conversion programs to move the text of the program about? Even if that can be made to work, it will have the APL problem. If you are trying to modify a program written with the fancy support without it, you loose. >One thing *I've* wanted is the ability include pictures in comments (for >example, imagine feeding a MacWrite file to the Macintosh C compiler). >The ability to include real drawings of box-and-pointer diagrams could >immensely clarify some hairy pieces of code now and then. Occaisionally >I have stooped to ASCII graphics, but somehow they just don't work as well. Why not put your documentation into a seperate file? Document files could be real documentation. If the program gets ported from the Mac to a NeXT machine, where (for example) uSoft Word doesn't exist, at least printed documentation could be available. Stephen.
barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (04/28/89)
In article <1265@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: >In article <1318@frog.UUCP>, john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) writes: >> And then again, having fonts be significant in variable names would make >> it easy to have variables like "script-G" that pop up in Quantum Mechanics... >Why not? Mathematicians have been using fonts and foreign alphabets for >hundreds of years without confusion. The last time a mathematician was allowed to design a programming language we ended up with APL, one of the most unreadable languages around (please, no flames from the APL afficionados, it's just my opinion). Mathematicians like to use single letters for everything, and they use character styles in place of spelling things out. I think they've gotten into this habit because they tend to do lots of work on blackboards, and spelling things out would slow them down too much. It also allows them to fit more onto a page, and much of mathematics needs to be published. However, programming doesn't have the same constraints. When typing, it would probably take just as long to type the word "real" as to type a script R (you presumably have to do some extra operations to get into and out of script mode). Most computer programs aren't published, so minimizing page count is not normally important (when programs and algorithms are published in journals, they unfortunately tend to have short variable names, probably for the same reason as in mathematics). Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) (04/28/89)
In article <1265@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: >> And then again, having fonts be significant in variable names would make >> it easy to have variables like "script-G" that pop up in Quantum Mechanics... >> (No, I am NOT serious. :-) > >Why not? Mathematicians have been using fonts and foreign alphabets for >hundreds of years without confusion. Just because at some stage in the >development of computers only punch card symbols were available, and at >the present time there is this atrocious attempt to limit us to the 63 >characters which the 7-bit ASCII handles, we should give this up? We know >how to use escape characters for those channels which are so limited. Mathematicians have not been doing this without confusion. This is a myth. It is probably built on some sort of industry-wide self-feeding ego trip. APL required all sorts of odd looking symbols. It was a nightmare. Write only programming. Seven bit ASCII has more than 63 printable characters. (2 ** 7) = 128. Seven bit ASCII is fine for programming (in english, as used in the states). If anything, it is too rich a character set. Fancy fonts and graphics should live in the documentation. In any case, with any kind of luck, i won't have to debug your code. Stephen.
richard@pantor.UUCP (Richard Sargent) (05/04/89)
sho@pur-phy (Sho Kuwamoto) in Message-ID: <2207@pur-phy> wrote: > In article <1318@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) writes: > >One thing *I've* wanted is the ability include pictures in comments (for > >example, imagine feeding a MacWrite file to the Macintosh C compiler). > >The ability to include real drawings of box-and-pointer diagrams could > >immensely clarify some hairy pieces of code now and then. Occaisionally > >I have stooped to ASCII graphics, but somehow they just don't work as well. > > If I ever wanted to do something like that, I would rather write a > separate MacWrite document which explained the code, and put a > reference to it in my code. Maybe it's a little less elegant, but I > don't like the idea of making the C compiler more complicated and > non-standard. The C compiler should just read in a text file. > Different fonts and styles wouldn't be quite so bad, since you could > use a regular text file with a resource which contained a style run. > I suppose you could use the same kind of system to do pictures, > keeping only the text in the data fork, and putting the picture > information in resources, but even this seems kind of complicated. I > don't know. It just seems kludgy. > > -Sho You know, a funny thing happenned ... Actually, my *lowly* Commodore-64 supports fonts and embedded graphics in the source file! The package is GEOS (which provides a Mac-like interface on the C-64), and the Assembler uses the geoWrite files for source, so muliple fonts, point sizes, and so on are all OK. But most notably, anywhere you need to include a bitmap, you can - just paste in the image and that's it. Simple? I thought so. All you need is a WYSIWYG environment. Richard Sargent Systems Analyst