Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!van-bc!
From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Aztec and Lattice. Do they suck?
Message-ID: <908@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 14 Dec 89 00:22:00 GMT
Lines: 74
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To: van-bc!rnews

In <1989Dec8.020928.25626@aucs.uucp>, 840445m@aucs.uucp (Alan McKay) writes:
>Am I correct to understand from this that somehow I can use AREXX to glue
>Lattice to whatever editor I want?  Could someone please send me more info
>on this?

Well, perhaps not all editors..  or more correctly, some editors are more
amenable to being part of a custom integration than others. The Editors that
come to mind that are exceptional for this purpose are CEDPro, TxEd, and UEdit.
DME has an ARexx interface, but I am unfamiliar with the scope of it, so can't
comment much.

The editor I am most familiar with is CEDPro, having been a tester for it since
it was still in its infancy as a shareware program. It features full control of
the editor by ARexx programs that are callable from within the editor (or from
outside). Virtually anything that can be done from the keyboard can also be
done from an ARexx program, and that ARexx program can be called from a function
key or menu selection, in the first release version, and from _any_ key in the
soon-to-be-released CEDPro 2.0.

What this means from an integration point of view is that a single keystroke
can call an ARexx program that can do anything to or with any file. A simple
example might be compiling from within your editor...

. The function key calls the script...

. The script calls the compiler, directing errors to a file, either through a
  command line switch or by redirection of stdout to a temporary file, or best of
  all, through piping the output through execio, a dandy little utility that
  comes with WShell (also by Bill Hawes, the author of ARexx), and directly to
  a stem variable within the script.

. The script then looks at the resulting file or set of variables, parsing to see
  if there were any errors.

. If there were errors, the script can open a new view (window) in CEDPro,
  dump a formatted copy of the first error message into it, and position the
  cursor  on the line in error in the source view, at the position indicated by
  the error file.

. If there were no errors, it can just tell you that, or perhaps you might want
  to push the CEDPro screen to the back and put you in a position to easily run
  the program to test.


The obvious benefits of this sort of versatility are hard to ignore, yet they
pale in comparison to the other things you can do with the combination that are
a great help to virtually any task you need the editor for.  Recently, a
package of ARexx and executable programs came over the net, called DevKit.
This package provides such things as autodoc lookup by simply hitting a key
when the cursor is over the system call you just typed in..  another window
opens up and shows you the call, complete, exactly as it appears in the
autodocs.  Include file tags and tags from your own code can be indexed and
made to appear with a keypress.

I have scripts that let me delete files, read news with 'keep' or 'discard'
functionality, reply to articles, post originals, or post email. I can delete
files, load a directory into a view, and so on.. all from within the editor.

While most programs do not have an ARexx port, many of them can be made to
serve an ARexx program indirectly by just running them and getting their output
in a number of ways. Programs that do have an ARexx port are just begging to be
glued to others that also have one. When 1.4 arrives I expect to see a great
clamour for ARexx-capable programs, since it will be bundled with the system.

-larry

--
" All I ask of my body is that it carry around my head."
         - Thomas Alva Edison -
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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