Fwd: feature suggestion for editing config files.

Fwd: feature suggestion for editing config files.

[Richard Stallman]

I am forwarding something sent by mika.p.makinen@webinfo.fi.

  I have an idea of smart file editing. While editing configuration files, an
editor could give information about a field of file, which is currently active
(cursor is in place of the field). This is like tooltips in Windows, but gives more
information. Information could be in a separate window or at last row of editor
window. information would be presented as long as cursor is located in the field.
Editor could also give advice about value ranges and errors in field values.
If editor knows different file formats, it can also autocorrect typing errors
in text fields.

Re: feature suggestion for editing config files.

[Wojciech Meyer]

If I can say something here. It is an important email for one reason
it gives an overview what today people expect from Emacs.
Personally when I first started using Emacs I would not think I could
find features found in IDEs like Eclipse, and I quite enjoyed that, it
comes just with different power. After couple of years I've had become
an Emacs power user, tried many packages, done many customisations...
I started to think that Emacs misses proper parsing and semantic
analysis. Lately I tried CEDET and ECB combo, and I started to be
amazed. Now, I think what's been proposed, is easily achiveable (could
be and should be!)  through the semantic package. I think this is
important, and even was mentioned in the NEWS file when semantic was
first included.

These are two cents from me.
Wojciech


Ps: sorry about formatting - sending from the mobile.

On 6/11/10, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> I am forwarding something sent by mika.p.makinen@webinfo.fi.
>
>   I have an idea of smart file editing. While editing configuration files,
> an
> editor could give information about a field of file, which is currently
> active
> (cursor is in place of the field). This is like tooltips in Windows, but
> gives more
> information. Information could be in a separate window or at last row of
> editor
> window. information would be presented as long as cursor is located in the
> field.
> Editor could also give advice about value ranges and errors in field values.
> If editor knows different file formats, it can also autocorrect typing
> errors
> in text fields.
>
>

-- 
Sent from my mobile device

Re: feature suggestion for editing config files.

[Ken Hori]

I think this will be incredibly useful not just for editing config files, but
for writing code. For example, Emacs can float a tooltip of the prototype of
<function_name> right after "function_name(" is typed and let it sit below the
cursor asynchronously for a certain amount of time.  It is something modern IDEs
has, which everyone seems to like but Emacs lacks.


On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Wojciech Meyer
<wojciech.meyer@googlemail.com> wrote:
> If I can say something here. It is an important email for one reason
> it gives an overview what today people expect from Emacs.
> Personally when I first started using Emacs I would not think I could
> find features found in IDEs like Eclipse, and I quite enjoyed that, it
> comes just with different power. After couple of years I've had become
> an Emacs power user, tried many packages, done many customisations...
> I started to think that Emacs misses proper parsing and semantic
> analysis. Lately I tried CEDET and ECB combo, and I started to be
> amazed. Now, I think what's been proposed, is easily achiveable (could
> be and should be!)  through the semantic package. I think this is
> important, and even was mentioned in the NEWS file when semantic was
> first included.
>
> These are two cents from me.
> Wojciech
>
>
> Ps: sorry about formatting - sending from the mobile.
>
> On 6/11/10, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>> I am forwarding something sent by mika.p.makinen@webinfo.fi.
>>
>>   I have an idea of smart file editing. While editing configuration files,
>> an
>> editor could give information about a field of file, which is currently
>> active
>> (cursor is in place of the field). This is like tooltips in Windows, but
>> gives more
>> information. Information could be in a separate window or at last row of
>> editor
>> window. information would be presented as long as cursor is located in the
>> field.
>> Editor could also give advice about value ranges and errors in field values.
>> If editor knows different file formats, it can also autocorrect typing
>> errors
>> in text fields.
>>
>>
>
> --
> Sent from my mobile device
>
>

Re: feature suggestion for editing config files.

[Wojciech Meyer]

	
Ken Hori <fplemma@gmail.com> writes:

> I think this will be incredibly useful not just for editing config files, but
> for writing code. For example, Emacs can float a tooltip of the prototype of
> <function_name> right after "function_name(" is typed and let it sit below the
> cursor asynchronously for a certain amount of time.  It is something modern IDEs
> has, which everyone seems to like but Emacs lacks.
>

Hi,

Yes, that is what I meant, for more complex grammars all the regex based
parsing, or hand cratfted recursive descent parsers in Emacs _could_ be
possibly substituted with Semantic. (which also maintains dependencies
between files, and know how to include the module), and despite the fact
I've seen Emacs modules like gcc-sense for C++ and I've seen ocaml-spot
for OCaml (which are both patches to a compiler, integrated with Emacs
by async process) which give an exact source code information, I am more
fond to see Semantic support as it is written natively in Elisp, and
makes the integration just easier (even if it is less precise).  The
pain is that for C++, to be precise, one needs to write the frontend for
unrolling templates which is basically an interpreter. (but that's one
of side effects of `nice features' of C++)

Wojciech