Re: How to develope wily?

> Autosave: One feature I'm thinking of implementing is autosave,
> so I can safely "debug" and hack wily at the same time.
> I hope I can extract and reuse the auto-backup code, and make
> it autosave dirty files in a $WILYSAVE dir every 30 seconds
> and as the first thing in all "immature" code.

I too have considerd an autosave because wily is too easy
to crash. There are many problem issues here though:
security, large files, are +Error or +Win windows
dirty?, disk space, modifying buffers during a Put (but
not causing the editor to 'lock' for a second or so),
user-selecting which files need autosave...



> Locale: I want to try and code the acme "Locale" command
> for wily, so I can change cwd and $PATH (among other things)
> in a running wily session.

yes, would be useful. Although, the quick solution
is to change the environment created by each shell as
it executes. This may also be more general than a change
to wily.

> Clicking B2 on (for example) Snarf gives poor feedback.
Not sure I agree here.

> but my B2 is a scroll wheel,
mine isn't, for a reason.

> often snaps even when it fails to actually generate a click.
> I want to try and reverse-flash or underline-flash the whole
> command selected by a B2 click.

fair enough and would be quite ok.


> About tab stops:
There was a discussion some time ago, i do not remember the details.
You may like to look for it.

> Files with a `:' in their name doesn't work with B3.
> I want to try and fix this.  I have a lot of such files in
> my maildir-formated mail directories.

I don't know how to avoid this without losing
the most useful ':' location directive.
You can always use a regexp, but I know it is
a pain.


> Selection of B2:  B2 behave like double-clicking B1, except
> it never gets whole lines or whole delimited expressions.

I think that there is scope for making all buttons have the same
searching rules. It's confusing. I do recall a discussion
on this again, some time ago.

> I think it would be nice to write commands in a guide file
> like [rm -rf], and than only have to B2B1-click the `r' or
> ']' to get the '-rf' without precision sweeping.

Note though, sweeping is not hard with a good mouse without
a scroll wheel on b2.


> Edit: Yeah, that would be nice.  I have tried ssam, but it
> crashes with complicated commands, and it only works through
> pipes on buffer contents.  It's unlikely I will code this
> myself.  Has anyone looked into this; are there any free
> source codes that can be cut'n'pasted, like (well) sam?

I don't understand? What is Edit?

The one missing feature that everyone that show wily to is
the syntax highlighting. I never miss it, but non-wily
users have been heard to say "the best thing about editor X is
its syntax highlighting."  If that's the best thing, then
I feel sorry for them, but nevertheless, it's prabably
not a bad thing.

It's a big challenge to implement though. And remember, C is
only one language, most syntax hilighters deal with C, (la)tex,
Ada, Perl, Pascal, html, xml, others... There is much scope however
to use someone else's free code once a colouring mechanism
is there. ACT's GPS and the older Grasp both have good Ada
syntax highlighting with more than just colours. They may
be a good reference as well as very established editors.

i



-- 
Dr. Ian Broster,
University of York.
Tel. +44 1904 432810