[Openroad-users] external Editor, continuation on Ians mail

Fri Mar 16 11:21:02 EST 2007

Hi Martin,
I agree with most of your comments here, however, syntax highlighting is available at present with the correct editor.  You can also use EditPlus which I prefer over TextPad.  From memory TextPad didn't have autocomplete, but EditPlus does.  Can't remember any other significant differences.  You still lack Intellisense, but it doesn't seem as important with the correct autocompletes.

I really can't sympathise with Ingres Corp's refusal to release the 4GL source code to workbnch.img, or whatever it is called in OR 2006.  They could do it without releasing the source to w4gldev.exe & w4glrun.exe so it would be zero risk to their revenue, the main risk is not doing it and people stopping using OpenROAD.  It would also free up the development team to concentrate on other enhancements.  Sorry, but there's just no excuse.

End of rant.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Martin Pomej" [martin.pomej at myworkplace.com.au]
Date: 16/03/2007 10:51 AM
To: "'International OpenROAD Users'" <openroad-users at peerlessit.com>
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] external Editor, continuation on Ians mail

Hello All,

I think we could all use the OR editor, hey we could use a pen and paper and scan the code in, but that is not the point. The basic point of an IDE is to aid in the writing of code and the development of an application, else why even have one. Intellisense is great, especially for external objects, and for people that haven't been working with OR for the last 30 years. ie me. Also syntax highlighting helps divide the code and getting the syntax correct. These two things are great aids and for what appears to be most of us, things we'd like to have and use. I don't think that syntax highlighting is much to ask, I remember in 1994 using a Borland C IDE running under DOS!!! and it had syntax highlighting .......

At the end of the day Ingres Corp is a business. Money has to come in else the company door closes. If a software company wants to increase revenue then one of the ways this can be done is to increase the number of people using their software. If you want OR to grow and get picked up by more developers then you have to make it easy to use so that any hack (like me) can start it and within 10 minutes be writing code, otherwise new development is always going to go to another language, and not necessarily because it's a better one, but because it's easier to use.
Near every developer has used or is using visual studio, it's probably the most used IDE on the windows platform, so unfortunately that has set the bench mark. Therefore most people will, as a lot of people on this forum have done, and compare OR workbench with visual studio.

Let me open up another can, online help. Money would be well spent here in my opinion. Don't get me wrong PDF files are great, but I don't think their intention was really to be an online help system. How good is MSDN, hit F1 when you're in visual studio and if you've highlighted a keyword a search is automatically done for you. Also a search can be done by topic and not by string comparison. Not to mention you also have the ability to search the web for help and I also like the fact that you get a sample on how to use virtually every statement.

People in this forum continue to have a go at visual studio, but with it's IDE and online help, it is a far better product than the OR Workbench with PDF's. Now I not having a go at the language, as we had that discussion last year 8-).

Anyway that's my 2c.
Regards, 
Martin.

From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com [mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com] On Behalf Of Frank Barratt
Sent: Friday, 16 March 2007 09:23
To: International OpenROAD Users
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] external Editor, continuation on Ians mail

Hi,

Am I still the only one who uses the OpenROAD editor? I find it quicker and like the fact that I can instantly compile the code without saving it first, I find without Intellisense and highlighted syntax it concentrates the mind to code it right first time.

Frank,
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Jean-Pierre Zuate 
To: International OpenROAD Users 
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 2:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] external Editor, continuation on Ians mail

Hello,

Not sure my reply is appropriate ...

You can use Textpad :

Download and licence : http://www.textpad.com/ 
Download the syntax coloration here : http://www.textpad.com/add-ons/synn2t.html (search for openroad in the page)

Create a document class named OpenROAD, with a file filter like : *.e?? 
Add those variables in your OpenROAD configuration (see http://www.naiua.org/openroad/editortextpad.htm)
II_W4GL_SYSTEMEDITOR=TRUE 
II_WINDOWEDIT="C:\Program Files\textpad 4\TextPad.exe" -t"%t" "%f(%l)" 
II_WINDOWVIEW="C:\Program Files\textpad 4\TextPad.exe" -r -t"%t" "%f"
The use of an external editor can prevent you from bugs sometimes appear in OpenROAD (in the past) : when code source was too big sometimes OpenROAD did not integrate it. In this case it is sometime useful to have a copy of a *.e?? file (if you see quicly enought you loose your code of course ...) 

HTH
-- 
Jean-Pierre Zuate
La Fage Conseil
 33(0)6 11 40 11 09
jpzuate at gmail.com
http://www.ingres-ua.fr/sponsors/la-fage-conseil/ 

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