[antlr-interest] ANTLRWorks 2 (for ANTLR v4)

Terence Parr parrt at cs.usfca.edu
Thu Sep 8 12:15:07 PDT 2011


On Sep 2, 2011, at 10:54 AM, Andreas Stefik wrote:

> Ter,
> 
> Just to keep adding:
> 
>> Refactoring
> 
> No complaints on this system. It does the most common things.

But do youuse it very often?

> 
>> displaying decision DFA (well, one person mentioned to say that sometimes it gets stuck)
> 
> Do you mean the syntax diagram side?

 this displays the decision-making DFA, not the syntax diagrams.

> I don't recall seeing it get
> stuck. I do, however, use the syntax diagrams constantly and find
> having the visualization one of the best features of using AW. Again
> an auto-hide like "pin" interface might be nice. Another feature that
> could be potentially helpful, although not a huge priority perhaps,
> would be to full screen it. That would be nice for class
> demonstrations.

I believe you can detach some of the windows, but maybe not the syntax diagram view.

> 
>> only one person mentioned showing the generated code
> 
> Since it's pretty straightforward to generate the code, it's not a
> huge deal for me either way.
> 
>> group/ungroup rules, rule collapsing
> 
> No real preference. Many IDEs have this and it's useful for certain
> kinds of boiler plate code (e.g., generated forms). IF there's a use
> that's helpful, it "might" include collapsing sections, like
> options/members/boilerplate stuff, or just semantic actions, or
> something else. I don't use this a whole lot in large scale code
> though in other IDEs either, though.

 I will probably leave this out of the 1st version.

> A few other thoughts after reading your post:
> 
> 1. I definitely agree that the syntax diagram, interpreter, console,
> and debugger are sort of odd as tabs. Having them all as pinned
> windows is more common in an IDE

 can you tell me what they pinned window is exactly?

> and has the advantage of letting you
> see more than one at a time (if you wish).
> 
> 2. It might be nice if you could have (on mac) a tabbed interface for
> multiple grammars instead of multiple floating windows.

 I think for imported grammars that might work.

> My most common
> use case is switching back and forth between a tree walker and a
> parser.

 true, but isn't a nicer to see two Windows next to each other to compare?

> Managing multiple tabs on multiple windows is somewhat more
> tedious than having one window where you can click on a new file and
> the syntax/interpreter, etc windows auto-respond accordingly.
> 
> There's a few more thoughts, for what it's worth,

 thanks very much for the feedback!
Ter


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