On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 05:55:21AM +0000, Ganesh Sittampalam wrote: > On Tue, 20 Jan 2009, Max Battcher wrote: > >> Trent W. Buck wrote: >>> Kari Hoijarvi <[email protected]> writes: >>> >>>> Dan Pascu wrote: >>>> Program is stored as a tree, and the IDE pretty prints it, the way you >>>> choose to. >>> >>> To handle arbitrary source formats in this way (which is what Darcs >>> would need to do), you need two steps: >>> >>> - a READ procedure, which converts the working tree into a normal >>> form. For example, a C language READ might utilize gccxml, and a >>> ReStructured Text READ would use rst2xml. >>> >>> - a SHOW procedure, which converts the internal representation (normal >>> form) to something the user can edit without going insane. >>> >> ... and then there is the fun that David Roundy liked to point out: how >> many of us program in complete compilable (and thus >> deconstructable/reconstructable) code *all the time*? What if you want >> to save a non-working fragment in progress? What if you make a tiny >> mistake and the file fails to parse correctly? >> >> You need either extremely hardened parsers that can withstand and >> well recover from error... or separate patch types/source control >> systems for works in progress versus tested/compiled files... > > Or a structure editor, like intentional programming had, in which > all your works in progress are valid syntax trees (there was a > special syntactic element for "unfilled in bit", but things like > brackets did match around it in the rendering).
That would mean that *everyone* involved in the project has to use a structure editor. IME there is very little that people will fight for MORE than the right to use their preferred editor :-) _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
