[comp.editors] Live Parsing Editors

ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire) (04/09/91)

>What I wanted to say is that an editor that understands things like
>declarations would be nice.  That would be even better than allowing multiple
>windows on the same file, a feature that very few editors have.  If the editor
>understood declarations, I could just ask it something by name without having
>to open another window and find the proper statement.  Another thing I'd like
>is lint-like functions, happening automatically while I'm editing.
>
>Does such an editor exist?  Or what's the closest?  Do people do these things
>with macros in standard editors?

There's an interesting editor LEXX on the IBM mainframes (and a port
of it on OS/2 called LPEX).  It's an IBM product, so it's not easily
made available on other platforms.

While it's not a "power editor" by any means, it does support "live
parsing", which means that you can have a program (a huge macro, if
like, or a compiled program) that is informed about the changes you are
making to the data, and has the capability to syntax check what you are
doing and modify the data or it's display format.

The demonstrations I have seen not only syntax check the program as
you type it, but also provides the appropriate indentation structure,
supplies highlight and/or color display of various parts of the program
so you can easily see what's logic, what's data, what's unclassifiable
(i.e., wrong).

Looked great, but not in very wide use yet.  Very little language
support supplied with the product (PL/1!!??).  Looks like more of a
research platform than anything else.  I wonder about it's machine
resource profile...

BTW, LEXX was created by Mike Cowlishaw, the same guy who designed the 
REXX language.

==========================================================================

Ed Spire                           email: ets@wrkgrp.com      (on uunet)
The Workstation Group              voice: 800-228-0255
6300 River Road, Suite 700            or  708-696-4800
Rosemont, Illinois  60018            fax: 708-696-2277

joshi@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Anil Joshi) (04/10/91)

ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire) writes:

>There's an interesting editor LEXX on the IBM mainframes (and a port
>of it on OS/2 called LPEX).  It's an IBM product, so it's not easily
>made available on other platforms.

LEXX is essentially designed for Dictionary (English Dictionary - I
think the Oxford ED) writing originally.

>While it's not a "power editor" by any means, it does support "live
>parsing", which means that you can have a program (a huge macro, if
It is not a power editor and is quite slow (at least the implementation
I have seen a couple of years back at IBM). It is also an IBM IUO (i.e.
Internal Use Only) and hence is not available for general public even
if one is ready to pay $s.

>Looked great, but not in very wide use yet.  Very little language
>support supplied with the product (PL/1!!??).  Looks like more of a

It is completely tailorable but is most powerful in displaying the
SCRIPT/VS documents. One possibility that you haven't seen it working
for PL/I may be because it has complete support for SCRIPT and nobody
has time to do it for other languages. But given REXX and LEXX one
should be able to write the macros for any language.
Anil
joshi@cs.uiuc.edu
-- 
"Come the (computer) revolution, all persons found guilty of such criminal
behaviour will be summarily executed, and their programs won't be!"
- Press, Flannerty, Teukolsky and Vetterling

ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire) (04/11/91)

>>While it's not a "power editor" by any means, it does support "live
>>parsing", which means that you can have a program (a huge macro, if
>It is not a power editor and is quite slow (at least the implementation
>I have seen a couple of years back at IBM). It is also an IBM IUO (i.e.
>Internal Use Only) and hence is not available for general public even
>if one is ready to pay $s.

It **is** now available for IBM Mainframes running VM/CMS!  It has been
bundled into a nifty little add-on to CMS that IBM sells, that provides
Unix-style Pipes for CMS.  Quite cheap, as IBM Mainframe stuff goes.

As I mentioned, an OS/2 port is also available from IBM, also quite
affordable.

==========================================================================

Ed Spire                           email: ets@wrkgrp.com      (on uunet)
The Workstation Group              voice: 800-228-0255
6300 River Road, Suite 700            or  708-696-4800
Rosemont, Illinois  60018            fax: 708-696-2277

QQ11@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK (Alan Thew) (04/13/91)

In article <1991Apr10.202050.1855@wrkgrp.COM>, ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire)
says:
>
.....
>>It is not a power editor and is quite slow (at least the implementation
>>I have seen a couple of years back at IBM). It is also an IBM IUO (i.e.
>>Internal Use Only) and hence is not available for general public even
>>if one is ready to pay $s.
LEXX is the editor that CMS should have by default or at least should be
part of CMS...(I'd use it all the time if I had a 3270 colour terminal..  :-()
>
>It **is** now available for IBM Mainframes running VM/CMS!  It has been
>bundled into a nifty little add-on to CMS that IBM sells, that provides
>Unix-style Pipes for CMS.  Quite cheap, as IBM Mainframe stuff goes.
This is ONLY in the U.S. In the UK, LEXX is available as a program offering
and separate from CMSPIPES.
>
Alan Thew  : University of Liverpool Computer Laboratory
Bitnet/Earn: QQ11@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK or QQ11%UK.AC.LIVERPOOL @ UKACRL
    UUCP   :           ....!mcsun!ukc!liv!qq11
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