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From: conybear@moncsbruce.oz (Roland Conybeare)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Possible LSC improvements
Message-ID: <328@moncsbruce.oz>
Date: Tue, 3-Nov-87 20:37:39 EST
Article-I.D.: moncsbru.328
Posted: Tue Nov  3 20:37:39 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Nov-87 09:36:14 EST
References: <6523@prls.UUCP> <9370001@hpfclp.HP.COM> <750@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Organization: Comp Sci, Monash Uni, Australia
Lines: 54
Summary: tags, prototypes + little things.


	Here are some improvements to LSC that I would appreciate:

*	ctrl-D opens the file whose name is given by the current selection; this
	is useful for looking up things in include files.  I would like something
	more sophisticated that looks up the definition of the selected function
	name or global variable, a la vi's tag command.

*	I find prototypes very useful.  However a lot of my code has fields in
	structures which are pointers to functions, and I cannot define a 
	prototype for these variables.  I would like to be able to prototype these
	as well; e.g.
		typedef struct _x {
			void 	*(*x_install_fn)( SET *s, int y );
			int		a, b, c;
		} X;

*	I find the restriction of one segment per file unpleasant at times.
	For example,  I have a lot of files (>40) with an "Initialisation part"
	and a "Working part".  The initialisation part contains code and
	data which is called once or transformed in some way and never used
	again.  If each such initialisation part had its own segment, then
	they would eventually get thrown away.  At the moment, to achieve
	such efficiencies I must put each initialisation section in its own
	file which obscures the intent of my programs.

*	Oh, please could there be some way to automatically run each 
	source file through another program before attempting to compile it?
	This would allow me to gratify my desire to write tools rather than
	applications;  I could also overcome so many deficiencies of C.  Let
	me write that inline function expander,  that initialiser of automatic
	arrays/structs..

Some less important improvements.

*	Could we have a zoom box in the project window?  This would make the
	window tall enough to display every file in its project.  Hopefully a
	zoom'd window would still be zoomed when returning from running a 
	program.

*	For include files,  I would like control-click in the title bar to 
	bring up a menu listing the files including the given file.  I would
	also like to be able to get this menu by clicking on a file in the 
	project window.  I find these menus so useful that often I find myself
	opening source files just so I can conveniently open an include file.
	
*	I would *love* some sort of cross-reference on my source code, telling
	me for each function where it is declared/called, and for each
	global variable where it is declared/used.

Finally, thank you for an excellent C compiler that deserves improvement.

Roland Conybeare
(conybear@moncsbruce.oz)