Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-lcc!unisoft!mtxinu!sybase!alf!malcolm
From: malcolm@alf.UUCP (Malcolm Colton)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Structured Editor vs. Text Editor
Summary: Brief recommended for PC programmers' editor
Message-ID: <1700@sybase.sybase.com>
Date: 27 Oct 88 19:43:12 GMT
References: <3385@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <39400003@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@sybase.sybase.com
Reply-To: malcolm@alf.UUCP (Malcolm Colton)
Organization: Sybase, Inc.
Lines: 18

In article <39400003@m.cs.uiuc.edu> wsmith@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>There are two main idea for editors, I think.  One is a simple text editor,
>the other is a structured editor.  The structure editor will guarantee the
>result of editing is legal for the specific programming language, of course.

In the PC marketplace, Brief from Underware and Associates (?)
is fully programmable, using a lisp-like language. There are sets of macros 
available that support syntax construction in C, dBase, and (I think) Pascal. 
This is somewhat short of syntax _checking_, but gives you faster 
syntactically correct program entry.  You can override the actions of the 
macros at any time with the cursor keys.

With a lot of ingenuity and skill, you could write syntax checking macros.
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Malcolm Colton				       Sybase, Inc., Emeryville, CA
{pyramid, pacbel, sun, mtxinu, capmkt}!sybase!malcolm
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