Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wrkgrp!ets From: ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire) Newsgroups: comp.editors Subject: Live Parsing Editors Message-ID: <1991Apr9.164625.1195@wrkgrp.COM> Date: 9 Apr 91 16:46:25 GMT Organization: The Workstation Group Lines: 40 >What I wanted to say is that an editor that understands things like >declarations would be nice. That would be even better than allowing multiple >windows on the same file, a feature that very few editors have. If the editor >understood declarations, I could just ask it something by name without having >to open another window and find the proper statement. Another thing I'd like >is lint-like functions, happening automatically while I'm editing. > >Does such an editor exist? Or what's the closest? Do people do these things >with macros in standard editors? There's an interesting editor LEXX on the IBM mainframes (and a port of it on OS/2 called LPEX). It's an IBM product, so it's not easily made available on other platforms. While it's not a "power editor" by any means, it does support "live parsing", which means that you can have a program (a huge macro, if like, or a compiled program) that is informed about the changes you are making to the data, and has the capability to syntax check what you are doing and modify the data or it's display format. The demonstrations I have seen not only syntax check the program as you type it, but also provides the appropriate indentation structure, supplies highlight and/or color display of various parts of the program so you can easily see what's logic, what's data, what's unclassifiable (i.e., wrong). Looked great, but not in very wide use yet. Very little language support supplied with the product (PL/1!!??). Looks like more of a research platform than anything else. I wonder about it's machine resource profile... BTW, LEXX was created by Mike Cowlishaw, the same guy who designed the REXX language. ========================================================================== Ed Spire email: ets@wrkgrp.com (on uunet) The Workstation Group voice: 800-228-0255 6300 River Road, Suite 700 or 708-696-4800 Rosemont, Illinois 60018 fax: 708-696-2277