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From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Think Pascal Wishes...?
Message-ID: <1990Sep24.231422.7178@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 24 Sep 90 23:14:22 GMT
References: <4251@husc6.harvard.edu>
Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 50

In article <4251@husc6.harvard.edu>, siegel@endor.uucp (Rich Siegel) writes:
> Does anyone have any wishes for THINK Pascal? Editor, Compiler, Debugger
> feature requests? Annoyances? Any sort of commentary?

Since you ask, here's a list. Sorry I don't have time to think of more.

Environment / general
o support for including external tools in project, e.g., run Rez if
  resource source changed - i.e., should be as powerful as Make, without
  losing current ease of use
o support for more than 1 resource file
o apropos - LISP environment style: a search for a string supplies a list of
  names, and you select the one you want and jump to its definition (see
  Mac Allegro Common Lisp for a good example)
o extend the current name menus (lists of uses files, procedure names etc.) to
  the project window (OPTION or COMMAND click on name in Project)

Compiler
o support for arrays larger than 32K _at least_ on the heap, preferably
  more than 32K global data (my BIGGEST priority)**********************
o assembly language output
o assembler for inlines (relatively low priority for me; real programmers
  like hex)

Debugger
o programmable breakpoints - like assertions: cause a drop into the debugger
  only if the condition they check is true and debugging mode is on - should
  _not_ be part of source code to keep it portable (at least within Mac)
o allow offsets of more than 32K
o disassembler, with pointers back to source (e.g., double-click on line
  of assembly code, get editor window, finger at source line)

Editor
o more levels of undo
o multiple views/panes (see how MS Word allows you to split the screen, or
  to have more than 1 window open at once for the same document - a good
  special case of this is to be able to see declarations and the place the
  declared items are used at the same time
o folding (based on occam editor): allow sections of code to be collapsed
  as in an outliner
o pretty printing - I'm one of the fans of this feature, except I find it
  irritating that I can't always break a long line. Sometimes I can do
  it by inserting a comment, sometimes I can't. Generally more parametrization
  and control in general will make pretty printing more useful
o option to output pretty printing in MacWrite or MS Word (could be a problem
  because original MacWrite only supported a small number of tabs) - or
  even PICT - format.

Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu