From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bruce Stephens Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: What IDE features do we need? Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:55:44 +0100 Message-ID: <878wz33u4f.fsf@cenderis.demon.co.uk> References: <87ve2ac2eo.fsf@jurta.org> <20080422115216.GA2609@muc.de> <87zlrleftm.fsf@jurta.org> <87zlrktiwf.fsf@baldur.tsdh.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1209066964 20358 80.91.229.12 (24 Apr 2008 19:56:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:56:04 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Apr 24 21:56:39 2008 connect(): Connection refused Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Jp7YY-0001Ry-D8 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:56:34 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:53190 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Jp7Xs-0007T9-MM for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:55:52 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Jp7Xp-0007T3-Qe for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:55:49 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Jp7Xn-0007Sk-9q for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:55:48 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=59833 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Jp7Xn-0007Sh-3h for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:55:47 -0400 Original-Received: from anchor-post-37.mail.demon.net ([194.217.242.87]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Jp7Xm-0003is-MW for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:55:46 -0400 Original-Received: from cenderis.demon.co.uk ([62.49.17.254] helo=localhost) by anchor-post-37.mail.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 4.68) id 1Jp7Xl-0004Lo-Nq for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:55:45 +0000 Original-Received: by localhost (Postfix, from userid 1000) id B166E7C67A; Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:55:44 +0100 (BST) In-Reply-To: (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Thu\, 24 Apr 2008 06\:21\:16 +0300") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (gnu/linux) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:95906 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii writes: [...] > Emacs already has infrastructure for most of those features (in > etags and in Ebrowse), sometimes even more than one package that > offers a different implementation of the same functionality, but we > need better UI for them and better graphical methods of presenting > the output. Current IDEs do them better in many cases. Many classes might offer a "show" method, for example. If I'm looking at foo.show() then an IDE that can determine what type "foo" is can show me the right declaration/definition. Even if it can't determine the type it can at least limit the choices to member functions. Such things are tricky (because you want to make reasonable guesses on syntactically invalid code---perhaps in a file that's never been syntactically valid), but it seems to be doable enough for the features to be useful (IMHO). When one's using C I guess there's less motivation: you'll have show_cons, show_string, etc., or cons_show, string_show. Lots of nicely distinct symbols. But in OO languages I think there's significant benefit in trying to get more context-dependent information, as cedet's semantic does.