Re: This is a simple question

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

I really cannot understand that observation. There are applications programs
that have simple, graphical & menu doohickies to do simple things. There are
applications programs that have all kinds of powerful features if only you
want to memorize hundreds of ctrl-shift-alt-caps-lock-tab key sequences and
tricky command line interpreters. Explain to me why you can't build an
editor that has a "Compile"/Build"/"Link"/"Run" set of buttons and *also*
interprets ctrl-shift-alt-caps-lock-tab key sequences and a tricky command
line? You like being an editor power-user? Great! RTFM. You just want to
build a hello-world app and hit the "Run" button? Great! Here's your
cut-n-paste mousey editor with a "Run" button at the top. Why are the two
incompatible?

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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"David Bolen" <db3l@fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:uy9mj2do3.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> "Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> writes:
>
> I'd agree with the goal.  I've just found that in my experience more
> often than not an IDE designed to present itself as simple and obvious
> rarely has the underlying depth to become more than simple and obvious
> when you acclimate to that.  That's fine for occasional and casual
> use, but it begins to fall down quickly for serious development, where
> you quickly find yourself wanting to bypass all the friendly interface
> stuff and just get the job done.
>