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

Fri Mar 16 20:50:18 EST 2007

Hi,

Interesting to see different people's views on the ability to produce an OR
IDE using third party tools. 

I still stand by my view that it would be extremely useful to be able to
write an IDE in a 3rd party language, or indeed have the info to be able to
do it in OpenROAD. I agree with Pete, Simon and others that it would be good
if the OR development team were free to concentrate on the language itself,
maybe providing a basic IDE, but enabling other people to write their own
IDEs (or dare I say it, things like Eclipse plugins). The way it is, only the
OR development team has the required information to produce a workbench so
they have to invest, what is I presume a large amount of time, into the work.

There are external editors, good ones too. So why hasn't Ingres put one into
the latest OpenROAD..... possibly because writing such an editor in OpenROAD
is a very difficult task. Now, if the IDE (or even just the editor) could be
written in something else it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

Looking at it from the viewpoint of writing the workbench in OR there was
very little wrong with the OR4 version. What I would like to see is OpenROAD
opened up more by providing better external links into the language, an
example being to exchange information between OR and another language e.g
using XML to pass info about objects, providing  routines that hook into OR
methods for the compiler, saving components, debugging etc. This would enable
us to write our own IDEs and do a whole load of other interesting stuff.

I use Eclipse when I'm not doing OR work and I don't find it particularly
overloaded. A bit daunting at first, but then you just use what you need, and
ignore the rest until you have a need to use it. I find it good to be able to
refactor code, connect to the version control of my choice, have different
views appropriate to what you're editing etc.

Just my views on the subject.

Regards,
Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com
[mailto:openroad-users-bounces at peerlessit.com]On Behalf Of Simon Lovell
Sent: 16 March 2007 00:21
To: 'InternationalOpenROADUsers'; MartinPomej
Subject: Re: [Openroad-users] external Editor, continuation on Ians mail

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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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