[antlr-interest] A few suggestions re. ANTLRWorks

[Olivier Lefevre]

When debugging, the first thing ANTLRWorks does is pop
up a file save dialog requesting a file name where to
save the grammar. Since it is an error to save a grammar
xxx in any other file than xxx.g but ANTLRWorks will let
you do that (and later put a wavy underline under the
grammar name) it should not pop up a file dialog but a
directory dialog and then automatically give the file
the only valid name under that directory: that would be
more robust.

Next comes the Input Text dialog. The Start Rule was set
to a (seemingly randomly chosen) rule in the grammar
describing a single line, so that the debugger terminated
after the first line of input. This drove me _nuts_ and it
took me a while to realize (by chance) what was going on.
It seems to me that the only sensible default for the Start
Rule is the topmost rule of the grammar, whatever that is,
and that it should be set to _that_ the first time.

Third, given how much aggravation spaces, newlines etc can
cause, it would be nice if ANTLRWorks, in the input window,
could highlight these characters, e.g., after the fashion of
emacs blank-mode-on. I have attached an example to show what
I mean.

Regards,

-- O.L.


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