Re: Ideas for Ada 200X

[Stuart Palin <stuart.palin@0.0>]

Stephen Leake wrote:
> > Stuart Palin wrote:
> >
> > >   The_Result := Meaningful_Ident_1 -- Meaningful_Ident_2
> > >                 + Meaningful_Ident_3;
> > >
> > >[OK Any decent form of testing should find the mistake
> 
> Also any decent editor; the comments are in a different color.

The same could be said for comment blocks, and those still
seem to be frowned upon ;-)

Anyhow, 'a decent editor' falls outside the basic language
definition and I don't think that there is an Ada Reference
Manual that governs what an editor 'must' do.

The ultra paranoid will also start wondering what the
failure modes of this 'intelligent' editor might be (if you
are starting to rely on it as part of your safety-case). 
"Will the reviewer always be using a context sensitive
editor?"  [A big "Hi" to all the legacy VAX guys and gals],
"What if the editor gets configured to display key
information as white on a white background!", "How is the
configuration of the editor controlled?", "What if the
reviewer is colour blind?" etc, etc.

Although this is a deliberately extreme view, I believe
there are documented cases of instances where "What you see
is NOT what you've got" leading to problems in a system
(though I think these might have been in more complex
graphic based editors).

In all it comes back to trying to patch up the original
decision (of all the compound delimiters that could have
been chosen, why that one) - and that is very unlikely to
lead to a satisfactory solution.
--
Stuart Palin