GEdit OPI plugin

[Yves Jaradin]

Le lundi 18 février 2008 à 13:42 +0000, Torsten Anders a écrit :
> Dear Simon, Antoine and Yves,
> 
> thanks a lot for starting this project!!
> 
> On Feb 16, 2008, at 10:55 PM, Simon van der Linden wrote:
> > My idea is very simple: to have an oz browser in the bottom pane,  
> > and a
> > "Feed Mozart with the selection" action in the right-click-menu.
> 
> On Feb 18, 2008, at 9:38 AM, Yves Jaradin wrote:
> >> I'm also one of the student who would like to develop a plugin for
> >> Gedit. Our goal is not to port the Emacs plugin to Gedit, with all
> >> functionnalities. Our goal is more to do a plugin which will be  
> >> usable
> >> for everyone. We would like to keep the plugin quiet simple and
> >> usable.
> > If anything, I feel the Emacs plugin is too short (no intelligent code
> > completion, no source outline, etc.) To be usable by everyone, a  
> > plugin
> > has to be usable by really everyone, including advanced users. I
> > wouldn't like to have used it for let's say two years and when wanting
> > to do something more complex, be told "Umh, you will have to use the
> > Emacs OPI to do this."
> 
> Yves, how realistic do you reckon is it to aim for a IDE which will  
> actually replace the OPI? Perhaps it would instead also be a useful  
> goal for the new gedit-plugin to provide something which makes it  
> more easy for new users to get into Mozart. Later, they may switch to  
> the Emacs-OPI if necessary...
For now, it's unrealistic to expect the gedit plugin to replace the
Emacs OPI becuase gedit is too Linux-specific. We need (at least)
support for Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris and Linux. If gedit reaches the
point were it is reasonably usable (no cygwin on Windows, no X on Mac,
native widgets, etc.) on all these systems then we might consider it as
a replacement.
But, we need some replacement for Emacs at least as a mid-term goal.
That's the reason I insist on at least the Oz part of the gedit plugin
to be portable and generic enough to support (almost) any plugin on any
system for any editor. The experience ecquired with gedit could then be
useful to build this replacement, whatever it will be.
> 
> For example, the OPI has a lot of useful features already which were  
> not even mentioned so far such as interaction with development tools  
> like the debugger, profiler, compiler panel. Sometimes, can also be  
> useful to access the OPI compiler from within Mozart.
All these features are already present in the gedit plugin prototype.
Only the ability to set breakpoints in the OPI (without inserting calls
to Ozcar.breakpoint) was lost.
>  Also, in case  
> of errors, moving to the next error is handy. Moreover, I am  
> sceptical whether for advanced uses it is a good idea to hard-wire  
> the gedit-plugin to some browser. In the OPI I am often switching  
> between the browser and the inspector (e.g., I configured the  
> inspector to support different 'viewpoints' of my data structure  
> which are selected with the mouse). I sometimes also simply use show  
> (e.g., then I can copy and paste the output). I am sure I forgot  
> features... Are you suggesting the new gedit-plugin should in the end  
> provide all the functionality as well?
Yes, that's what I would like but maybe that's too much having this as a
starting goal. On the need for another Browser, actually we need, again
as a mid-term or long-term goal, a replacement for Tcl/Tk which is
getting old and ugly, particularly in recent desktop environments. I see
this gedit-specific Browser as a good occasion to decouple the Browser
core functionality (dynamically describing values) from the Tk specific
stuff.
> 
> Best
> Torsten
> 
Yves
> --
> Torsten Anders
> Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research
> University of Plymouth
> Office: +44-1752-233667
> Private: +44-1752-558917
> http://strasheela.sourceforge.net
> http://www.torsten-anders.de
> 
> 
> 
> 
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