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Date:Mon Aug 11 08:59:00 2003 
Subject:Re: poplog interactive mode - PS -> Syntax editor 
From:Chris Dollin 
Volume-ID:1030811.02 

 eas-lab@absamail.co.za wrote:

>>Thanks for your comments on Ved's shortcomings.  I've got some of
 
>>>No syntax colorizing has to be the top one,
> 
> Ved is great, but,
> I think a 'syntax editor' would be a killer application for poplog.

"Killer" in the sense of making it stone dead, maybe ...

> I've never used/seen a visual-syntax-editor where one just picks
> the required 'structures', but it always seemed absurd to have the
> possibility of making syntax errors by allowing unconstrained
> text entry.   How do these "visual things" work ?

My understanding is that all the syntax-editors that were tried
failed in practice because they were instrinsically a right pain
to use. People just don't think in terms of tree transformations,
and often the convenient way to get from legal A to legal B is via
illegal C, D, and E.

Having *help* to make syntactically correct structures is good.
Having *help* to spot bad ones (without having to run the compiler
explicitly) is good too. Saying "thou shalt edit trees and the
leaves therof" seems to be a way of inducing first apoplexy and
second skills in aiming for the wastebasket.

-- 
Chris "electric hedgehog" Dollin
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