OpenEuphoria

IDE Editor Hints

• Posted by David Cuny <dcuny at LANSET.COM> Mar 30, 2001
• 475 views

I was playing with a pop-up hint system for the Win32Lib IDE editor, and
wondered how it should behave.

One option is to have is display a routine prototype. For example, if you
type:


ntf( 

then a popup hint could show you something like:

   printf( integer handle, sequence format, object args )

This is relatively easy to do. If it were really clever, it could even use
prototypes of your own routine.

Since hints don't have to be limited to a single line, it might be nice if it
showed you the include file as well, and perhaps the value a routine returned on
failure:

   x = dir( x )
   include file.e
   Failure returns -1

Then again, that's a pretty large hint.

Since the help system is smart enough to know that an include is needed, does
that mean it should *automatically* add the file? That's the question I'd be
asking if I were a newbie, anyway.

Then again, is that making the editer *too* smart?

Another option would be to have the hint show a possible completion for what you
are currently typing. For example:

   spri

might elicit the hint:

   sprintf(

and pressing some 'magic' key would complete the routine. In VB, you actually
get a dropdown listing all the possible values, but it's less sensible in
Euphoria, where there isn't a class system to bind possible values together, and
the return types of functions are never explicitly declared.

Of course, there needs to be a way to turn the hints off. I suspect that an
advanced user would find these things to be irritating after a while.

So what would an *advanced* user want to see?

Comments?

Thanks!

-- David Cuny