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[editor] REBOL editor (was: Updated Syntax Highlighting for UltraEdit)

 [1/3] from: gregg:pointillistic at: 9-Dec-2007 14:01


I've always thought that we were 90% of the way there, since emacs was built on a Lisp engine that they had to write first. Cal Dixon wrote a console mode emacs engine, and James Marsden did some really cool stuff with View. I think it's doable, and I want a full REBOL environment but, to me, that means rethinking things, not just doing what other editors and IDEs do. -- Gregg

 [2/3] from: tim-johnsons::web::com at: 9-Dec-2007 15:40


On Sunday 09 December 2007, Gregg Irwin wrote:
> I've always thought that we were 90% of the way there, since emacs was > built on a Lisp engine that they had to write first. Cal Dixon wrote > a console mode emacs engine, and James Marsden did some really cool > stuff with View. I think it's doable, and I want a full REBOL > environment but, to me, that means rethinking things, not just doing > what other editors and IDEs do.
:-) I'm all for an editor built on rebol, but I *do* use emacs as my editing and development environment - having developed a a major mode for rebol using elisp. There are many who turn up their nose at emacs - they get distracted by rumors of having to use keystroke "chords" and they roll their eyes at such a rumor and stop there. The truth is - emacs is the most extendable editor/IDE in the freeware world IMHO and that is why I use it. Emacs "in the raw" is very difficult to learn, but many different skins can be built on top of it. In fact emacs *could* be the engine that drives a fully endowed rebol IDE and the user (if he/she so chooses) would *never* have to press 3 keys at once. :-) Having said that, I'm not sure what a beast emacs would be on windows, I'm not sure that asynchronous communication with the binary works on Microsoft platforms and that is one of the things I really find productive. tim

 [3/3] from: greg::schofield::iinet::net::au at: 10-Dec-2007 22:36


Gregg, I am no professional scriptor, usually just using any text editor on hand. Line editors leave me a bit cold - rethinking things and doing a ground up editor in REBOL, for REBOL, seems a good approach - of course if the design is very good it will be good for a lot of different text tasks. So with some trepidation I would make a few suggestions. I have a typographical background, therefore line editors are to my eyes primitive, the colouring of syntax tokens, helpful to a degree, but hardly exploiting the full and subtle range needed to see clearly the relationships between code fragments. The block syntax of REBOL seems to especially recommend itself to typographical layout. To collapsing and expanding fragments, to employing hierarchical numbering instead of simple line numbers. Plus for novices it would make longer scripts all the more readable and that is important. I would suggest a break with line editing altogether, and the idea of block manipulation as the basis for quickly composing scripts, making comments sensible, readable and typographically distinct, along with other features of the language. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Gregg Irwin <gregg-pointillistic.com> To: Carl Read <rebolist-rebol.com> Reply-To: rebolist-rebol.com Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 14:01:08 -0700 Subject: [REBOL] [editor] REBOL editor (was: Updated Syntax Highlighting for UltraEdit) I've always thought that we were 90% of the way there, since emacs was built on a Lisp engine that they had to write first. Cal Dixon wrote a console mode emacs engine, and James Marsden did some really cool stuff with View. I think it's doable, and I want a full REBOL environment but, to me, that means rethinking things, not just doing what other editors and IDEs do. -- Gregg