Suggestion for correcting the IDE's script editor

[Mark Waddingham]

Hi all,

I've been reading this thread this morning and it does seem to have
become somewhat of a 'holy war' which I'm sure is not what anybody
intended.

I have used, and use on a daily basis, a myriad of IDEs - including the
more recent ones mentioned by individuals involved in this thread. Most
other language IDE's do not auto-format code, they just help to set the
cursor at the correct point for you to type what you want, or move
statements to the previous indent level that you had set implicitly by
typing. Indeed, they generally all do this slightly differently and this
can be a real headache when you use three distinct IDEs to do C++
development and have to constantly switch between them.

Looking at history, I think the reason for this is because most
environments have not been bold enough to stand up and say "We think
code should be formatted *this* way because it makes sense" - and indeed
for other languages this is perfectly valid as most of them originated
before the time of fancy editors (i.e. when you had to use a standard
text-editor to do your scripting). The xTalk genre of languages is,
however, slightly different in that auto-formatting in the strong sense
was in the environments from the start. This means that many people have
grown up accustomed to not having to worry about formatting when
programming in the various flavours of xTalk.

Now, to Bob and others of you who have come from other backgrounds (and
I am one of those) then - yes - shifting environments can be a headache
(and indeed immensely frustrating on occasion) at first. However, on
this particular issue, I would ask you all to consider doing the
following for a while: stop worrying about formatting - use tab to auto-
format your handlers periodically and forget about it. I reckon after a
couple of weeks of trying this, you'll fall into the xTalk way of
formatting and never look back - I know I have.

Now, to all of you who have been using Revolution and other similar
tools for years: please do not forget that there is more than one to do
things and there is a great deal of merit in both what has been proposed
and in the way other environments work (this does not mean we will ever
throw out the existing behaviour, but it is not unreasonable to give
users the choice). A great deal of HCI research will have gone into
every IDE that you see and we can either ignore it in our arrogance or
learn from it to make Revolution the best tool it can be.

To both parties (just to re-iterate) please do not fall into the habit
of thinking that either:
  1) Just because Revolution doesn't work the way another tool does,
that Revolution is wrong.
  2) Just because Revolution does something a different way from another
tool, the other tool is wrong.
Bugs aside, there will always be reasons why one feature works a way it
does: regardless of what tool you are talking about.

Finally, on bugs... Although it may appear as though we don't, we know
the Script Editor has bugs - it needs an overhaul and we are actively
looking into this. However, I think the general concensus is that once
you have used it for a while it is a perfectly productive component that
will serve you well most of the time. So, if you come across a specific
reproducible issue then please do file it in Bugzilla, and similarly if
you have an idea for how you think it can be made better please file it
as an enhancement in Bugzilla.

Warmest Regards,

Mark Waddinghham
Chief Technical Officer.

------------------------------------------------------------------
 Mark Waddingham ~ 36degrees at runrev.com ~ http://www.runrev.com
       Runtime Revolution ~ User-Centric Development Tools