[antlr-interest] ANTLRWorks GUI dev environment videos

[Loring Craymer]

Monty--

Yeah, the codegen access makes it easy, but I think that the capability
should be "at your fingertips" in the GUI.  Most of the use I see would be
to build tools centered around a single grammar and application, and it
would be helpful to be able to get such tools up quickly.  I don't see
myself getting much use out of the source-level debugging--my experience is
that when I go in with a debugger, it's to get at the action code--but for
any moderately complex problem, there is an application-specific tool that
would be useful but has a cost associated with building it.

--Loring 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monty Zukowski [mailto:monty at codetransform.com]
> Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2005 8:48 AM
> To: Loring Craymer
> Cc: 'Terence Parr'; 'ANTLR Interest'
> Subject: Re: [antlr-interest] ANTLRWorks GUI dev environment videos
> 
> On Apr 10, 2005, at 1:27 AM, Loring Craymer wrote:
> 
> > 2.) pre-Aspect ANTLR:  Insert actions after ':' or before ';',
> > before/after
> > '(', ')', ')+', ')*', ')?' in cloned grammar.  This, coupled with
> > extract/inline rule, encompasses most of the functionality of an Aspect
> > ANTLR; additionally making the insertion dependent on finding a
> > sequence of
> > token types would provide most of the remaining support needed.  (Note
> > that
> > this provides a simple mechanism for the "traceIn/traceOut" feature of
> > ANTLR
> > 2 and PCCTS).  Monty might have some further suggestions.
> 
> Now that you mention it, many of my concerns are addressed by having
> access to the code generators.  I think there is a middle ground
> between the raw grammar handling and the action code.  That space is
> where things like tracing, tree node construction and exception
> handling strategies should be implemented.  These are the things that
> affect all the generated code, but which shouldn't have to be specified
> in each action.
> 
> Some way to isolate these global user specified behaviors from strictly
> grammar based code gen would be handy.  That's my goal for an
> aspect-oriented approach to ANTLR--simple, clear specification of that
> code which pervades all the actions.  It's like having control of the
> environment in which actions take place.
> 
> Really I'll just have to start hacking the code generator and see what
> falls in place.
> 
> Monty