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From: ken@hertz.njit.edu (ken ng cccc)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Xedit is better than vi and emacs
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.155049.21710@njitgw.njit.edu>
Date: 24 Apr 91 15:50:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: njitgw.1991Apr24.155049.21710
References: <1991Apr18.135129.16408@njitgw.njit.edu> <1991Apr21.011316.13111@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <1991Apr23.024525.13795@cs.ucla.edu>
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In article <1991Apr23.024525.13795@cs.ucla.edu> gast@maui.cs.ucla.edu (David Gast) writes:
:BTW, another poster keeps talking about opening up lines.  What do you
:mean by opening them up?
:david

Its me.  Let's see.  Let's say you have a pascal program with about a dozen
or so functions/procedures.  You have already written the procedures, but
need to refer back to them every so often to get the parameters straight.
Instead of scrolling through the actual function source code each and every
time, if you could hide or close off certain sections of code from being
presently displayable, you could find the functions easier.  If you were
not sure how function 'foo' works, you could open up/display the text that
was hidden.

For example, a fully displayed procedure:
procedure foo( var a, b, c : integer);
var 
   d, e: integer;
begin
   d := a + b + c;
   a := d / c;
end;


For example, a hidden procedure:
procedure foo( var a, b, c : integer);
----------------------- 6 lines not displayed ---------------------------

Now, if you only wanted to know what the args for 'foo' were, you only need
the hidden version of the display (also presuming you pick better variable
names).  This beats having to scroll through the definition every bloody
time you wonder what the args to this or another procedure were. 

Note: sometime last year (?) there was talk of this revolutionary new
concept called a 'folding editor'.  From the description it sounds like
something that XEDIT had for years.  But since I have not used it, I cannot
be sure.

Kenneth Ng
"No problem, this is how you make it" -- R. Barclay, ST: TNG