Re: This is a simple question

[Jean-Marc Bourguet <jbourguet@free.fr>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
[...]
> And I still don't see how you say to EMACS: "See that directory over there
> full of Ada files? That's my project. Go open up my *project* and display
> all the files on the left for me.

Does

M-x speedbar

do what you want?  I don't like this so I never use it.

>  Make sure I can click on the file of
> interest and have it expand to show me all of the
> functions/procedures/types/objects/whatever that are in it.

I don't known if it does that.  But Shift and the right mouse button
does
allow you to choose this kind of things in a menu.

> Make sure I can
> click on any one of those thingies and be put right in the text where its
> at." That's the kind of thing that a few other IDEs I've used provide.
> (Possibly, as Ted suggested, an IDE could be built that does this & then
> gives you a choice of text editors to invoke on the file in question. But
> that's not the same as saying "EMACS can be your IDE...")
> 
> I am not saying that EMACS can't edit Ada files and do spiffy Ada things.
> What I'm saying is that it doesn't look like a standard PC application and
> that it doesn't provide simple, obvious ways of getting simple, obvious
> things done. 

Simple and obvious are often synonymous of "what I'm used to".  I tend
to
get upset when C-A does not go to the start of the line (I'm typing this
into Netscape and C-A move the cursor to the start of the line and M-f
goes a word forward, ...)

> As such I would think it would take too much work to make it
> into an Ada IDE and/or the end result would likely be an attrocity that
> would be very off-putting to many PC developers used to seeing looking a
> certain way.

Emacs 21  goes probably in the direction you want about the look.

About the functionnality, it is probably not too much work for someone
who already know well emacs, the numerous modes available outside the
distribution and what you want.

> Sure. There will always be "power users" who will want millions of features
> and be willing to read reams of documentation to become familiar with a
> given tool. However, I think you can point at a much larger body of people
> who just want to point and click and get a few simple things done. (Notepad
> gets used by a *lot* of people even though it doesn't do much. What it
> *does* do is obvious to any PC user - something EMACS lacks but might
> possibly be able to have, had that been a design goal.) IMHO, EMACS suffers
> from satisfying the power-user at the expense of failing to satisfy the
> casual user. The two are not incompatible.

The first time I've used it was on VT100 connected to a PDP-10 and it
has
been mostly upward compatible since then (C-A, M-F worked like now). It
has
always paid more attention to satisfy its current user base than target
users
which did not use it yet. Not something I'll complain about.

Yours,

-- Jean-Marc