Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!wsmith
From: wsmith@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Language Design
Message-ID: <5200040@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 16 Mar 89 04:57:00 GMT
Lines: 21
Nf-ID: #N:m.cs.uiuc.edu:5200040:000:857
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!wsmith    Mar 15 22:57:00 1989


Should the language designers be making work for the language-oriented
editor designers or should the language-oriented editor designers
be making work for the language designers?

I believe it should be the latter.   The language oriented-editor designers
should provide a technology base that may be taken as given by the language
designer who may then design languages without ugly lexical or syntactic 
structures that make it impossible for the compiler to give sensible error 
messages.

(For example, in the language I'm learning now, C++, if you forget to 
declare a class, it is a *syntax* error.  Not misuse of identifier or 
undefined class, *syntax* error.)

(Define language-oriented editor to by the hypertext object-oriented
WYSIWYG formating editor or equivalent that you wish *you'd* written.)

Bill Smith
wsmith@cs.uiuc.edu
uiucdcs!wsmith