From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,LOTS_OF_MONEY autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.szaf.org!gandalf.srv.welterde.de!news.jacob-sparre.dk!loke.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: David, have you thought about using an existing editor? Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 15:35:55 -0600 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: rrsoftware.com X-Trace: loke.gir.dk 1421876156 5726 24.196.82.226 (21 Jan 2015 21:35:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 21:35:56 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Response X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:24681 Date: 2015-01-21T15:35:55-06:00 List-Id: "Hubert" wrote in message news:xvCvw.1015500$Ub6.871244@fx20.iad... >@ David Botton > > I have been following your posts about your idea for a IDE for Ada. I was > thinking about somehting like that myself but was quickly discouraged > because of the huge amount of work that this would be. Writing an visual editor is not a "huge amount of work". I've written more than a dozen of them over the years, including one for CP/M written in Z80 assembler (RED), and our MS-DOS TUI editor for Janus/Ada (JAWS). Plus the entire "SLED" series of sample programs for Claw, building editors three different ways. In modern systems, most of the complex edit stuff will be available in some form in your GUI toolkit. (No one is going to build a GUI from scratch today, as I had to with RED and the original JAWS.) What's a lot of work is all of the Ada-specific stuff that one would want: auto-indentation, syntax colorization, project management interfacing, build management, and so on. And very little of that would appear in any useful sense in some existing system. Even that which did would have to be bent to fit into an existing scheme, which is likely to be at least as much work as building something that makes sense from a blank slate. So you're probably right about the amount of work, but wrong that there is any sensible way to avoid it. Randy.