[antlr-interest] Antlr Studio Video

Prashant Deva prashant.deva at gmail.com
Thu Jun 2 22:44:37 PDT 2005


Brian,
> If you change
> the color of the dashed lines to black or something else that is dark
> then I think you will solve the sole technical issue that was raised
> about your decision. 

Actually , the dashed line ARE black! That was the whole point of
showing the video. The entire diagram is black and white, it just
becomes colored when you move you mouse over it.

Your comments are excellent. I will see how much of that i can support
in my ide.


Lloyd,

>is it possible to move the syntax panel (on the side and make it >bigger)?

Yes, of course. Its a normal eclispe view, you can resize it, move it
,throw it in the trash can or gobble it up ;-)

Michael,
>It looks like a nice feature of a very useful tool but, your [arbitary]
>choice of notation is a little bizarre. 

Actually the notation is not arbitrary. I saw this notation used in a
doc titled ' The Newton Script Programmaing language', from apple
computers. It looked real pretty there, so i thought of using it here.

Will be demonstrating a LOT of other real cool features soon.

PRASHANT


On 6/3/05, Brian Smith <brianlsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
> Prashant,
> 
> I think that your demo is really interesting and I wouldn't let the
> people complaining about the dashed boxes get to you. If you change
> the color of the dashed lines to black or something else that is dark
> then I think you will solve the sole technical issue that was raised
> about your decision. Syntax diagramming is not even the make-or-break
> feature for an IDE for tools like ANTLR anyway. If I had to make a
> wishlist of IDE features for ANTLR, in order of importance, it would
> look like this:
> 
> * Support for disambiguating ambiguous grammars. In particular, the
> tool should show me which parts of the grammar are ambiguous, WHY they
> are ambiguous, and offer ways to fix the ambiguities.
> * Ability to (semi-)automatically convert grammars written using other
> systems (e.g. JavaCC, Flex/Bison, SDF, BNF converter) to ANTLR. Most
> computer languages already have a grammar of some kind, but the set of
> computer languages with ANTLR grammars is much smaller.
> * Support for testing grammars. E.g., generating test cases, run test
> cases automatically, provide testing coverage reports. In particular,
> the tool should be able to generate a bunch of strings that are
> matched by the grammar, and let you selectively add those strings as
> test cases.
> * Support for interactive development of grammars. I.e., making the
> code-compile-test cycle as fast as possible.
> * Ability to keep grammars and tests in sync. For example, if you have
> seperate a seperate parser and tree parser(s), when you change the
> parser, the IDE should help remind you to change the tree parser(s)
> and the test cases.
> * Syntax highlighting and code folding.
> * Code completion, both inside the ANTLR productions and inside the
> (Java/C#/etc.) actions.
> 
> I think that if your tool provides even half of the above features,
> then your users are going to be a lot more productive than they were
> without the tool. And productivity, not diagram prettiness, is what
> matters. And, anyway, unless the dashed boxes start causing users of
> your software to die off or something, it is something that can be
> changed in the future at your discretion.
> 
> - Brian
> 
> 
> On 6/2/05, Prashant Deva <prashant.deva at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ok, i have put up a video showing a proper demo of the syntax diagram view.
> > Get it at -
> > http://antlrstudio.com/demo1.wmv
> >
> > PRASHANT
> >
>


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