Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

["chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com>]

> I would find an interface similar to Forte to be appealing.

What's Forte when it's at home?  Is it free?

I ask since it's important to explore various IDEs and see what features work
and what are useless.  However, my requirements are going to be different from
other ppl's and this is going cooperation from ppl to get right.

I've been working on a small prototype that is specifically designed to play
with compiler invocation and configuration.  It should be at the release stage
in a few days, and I would hope ppl will take a peek at it and help me get the
compiler configuration interface into a usuable state.  It's not meant to be
used for serious work and isn't to be considered serious at all (it's a toy
designed to get opinions from folk).

{
it uses gwindows 0.3

how stable is gwindows?  I mean, how much of it is likely to change and become
incompatible in the future?

Should i stick with 0.3 or go for the pre-beta release (I don't imagine there
will be much difference _once I get it compiled_, and it won't impact on the
program at all)
}


> However, a
> couple important features would be extensive hotkey support (aka LyX),

Lyx?

Extensive hotkey support like reconfiguring hotkeys?


> and customization of the look and feel.

It is important to account for different tastes (may increase productivity),
however the level of customisation shouldn't be too great (or useless).


> I'm pretty open on what and how
> many features it contains, as long as each "feature" has a real reason for
> being there.

Oh yes, no point going down the _feature bloat_ route.  Another point on
"features" is not to ram them down the developers throat.  I get annoyed with
some IDEs that make you use a project to compile toy programs.  Anyone else get
annoyed at this?

> It obviously should have plugins for working with an external
> debugger(GVD anyone?), and the LRM and Annexes in a Help dialogue that's
> easy to get to.

I'd really like to have plugins but I don't have a clue how to do this, anyone
know a good introduction to plugin-ability on the windows platform?


Chris