On Aug 27, 2010, at 3:14 PM, Neil Van Dyke wrote: > John Clements wrote at 08/27/2010 05:38 PM: >> On Aug 26, 2010, at 11:09 PM, Ryan Culpepper wrote: >> >> >>> Another, less invasive, way of making the stepper-definition connection >>> might be on every step to scroll the definitions window and highlight the >>> term from which the redex is derived. For function application the function >>> definition could be highlighted too in a different color. The highlighting >>> would require some creativity for forms like cond (maybe de-highlight >>> clauses as they're eliminated?), but it would be a more incremental >>> approach than forcing the stepper UI into the definitions window. >>> >>> >> >> This might be awesome, or it might be confusing; I can imagine students >> seeing the definitions window jumping around and at a minimum being >> distracted, or even think that the definitions were changing. I guess I'd >> want to see it, first. >> > > If anyone wants to try out a simple stepper for Lisp-ish code that scrolls > your window to highlight the current expression in your actual source files, > your Emacs has EDebug: > > http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/html_node/edebug.html > > It actually only highlights if you have some kind of matching-paren > highlighting enabled; otherwise it just puts the cursor on the first > character of the expression. My favorite for matching paren highlighting in > Emacs is to have this in my "~/.emacs", and to elsewhere configure my cursor > to be a full-size solid unblinking red background: > > (setq show-paren-style 'parenthesis) > (require 'paren) > (show-paren-mode t) > > In Emacs, experienced users are already accustomed to the current window > switching which file/buffer it's showing, so EDebug just does that when > moving between files. I don't know whether that's appropriate for DrRacket.
I tried this out, and it did pretty much what I expected; thanks! My earlier comment isn't suggesting that this isn't useful; it's asking whether doing this *simultaneously* with a separate display that's using substitution to evaluate an expression would cause cognitive overload. John
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