[antlr-interest] v3 pre-release usage data and stat collection

[Terence Parr]

Howdy,

In an effort to provide a better product (both the GUI ANTLRWorks and  
antlr v3 itself), the pre-release coming out in a week or two will  
include extra code for debugging as well as usage/stats collection.   
This information will be collected continuously and stored in a file  
on your disk.  Once a week a dialog will pop-up in ANTLRWorks showing  
you the report it is planning on sending to my antlr.org server.  The  
stats/usage info will naturally be wiped clean of anything that could  
identify you or your company (e.g., no list of rules or machine name  
or whatever).

By knowing which features you use in the GUI we can focus on  
improving those features.  By tracking info about your grammar and  
how much lookahead is used during actual parsing, I can optimize  
ANTLR v3 for the full release.

How do people feel about this?  Seems like it shouldn't bother  
anybody and it will *only* occur during the pre-release days when  
we'll have debugging and other stuff in there anyway.  Most people  
will be waiting for a full release, but the courageous and intrepid  
v3 pre-release users will have to hit "OK" once a week in the  
GUI. ;)  Naturally if you don't use the GUI, you will never see the  
dialog and no data will be sent.

Regards,
Terence
--
CS Professor & Grad Director, University of San Francisco
Creator, ANTLR Parser Generator, http://www.antlr.org
Cofounder, http://www.jguru.com