special editor support for indentation needed.

[Eric S. Johansson]

John Yeung wrote:
> This is such a fascinating and compelling thread that it has pulled me
> out of lurker mode.
> 
> Eric, I would like to say I also admire your initiative, but even more
> so your patience.  You seem to handle comments of all types
> gracefully.

Should have seen me 20 years ago.  lets just say there are few posts I deeply
regret.

> Perhaps it comes from working with speech recognition so much.  I
> imagine that if you are using a speech-based programming environment
> and get frustrated with how stupid it is, and tell it off, you only
> manage to create more of a mess for yourself to clean up.  I think
> most of us who rely on our vision and typing lose our cool more
> easily, partly because the penalty for us is not as great.

Well, if I lose my temper and yell, I lose the ability to work for a day or two.
 Being self-employed, I can't afford that.  This is not to say I don't get
extremely frustrated.  I just rant off keyboard much to my wife's dismay.
Fortunately, my clients mostly see the calm, cool, only slightly rattled at
times consultant that I am.

> Anyway, sorry for being a bit off-topic.  I'm afraid I don't have a
> lot to offer on the topic.  My thoughts as I was reading the earlier
> comments is that Python, by its nature, is extremely flexible and thus
> inherently tough to map to a speech-only interface.  "Flatter"
> languages would seem better suited, but then they tend to be lower-
> level, thus more verbose, thus what you gain in lack of ambiguity
> might be lost in having to produce more code.

You have hit one of the challenges directly square on the head.   for Chile, one
of the benefits of an extremely flexible language like Python is you can use a
regimented form full of consistent idioms and get your job done.  obviously
these idioms would be the result of whatever tools you use to create code.
> 
> If it is to be Python after all, it seems the strategy you have in
> mind is to make the typical patterns as easy as possible, and either
> not allow for the more exotic ones or settle for making them much more
> complicated to achieve.  You also seem to have a pretty clear idea of
> the behaviors you want already.

Yes.  That was one of the rules I should've put into another post.  Make the
common path simple let the unusual path be complex.


> 
> I think your best bet is to stick with Emacs.  It's the only editor I
> know of which is almost fully programmable without recompiling, and
> it's available for Windows.  (I am not clear on whether you already
> use Emacs for Windows, or whether you remotely use Emacs on Linux,
> from Windows.)
> 
> It does sound like you have to do a bit of Emacs Lisp programming to
> get what you want, but I'd guess that's easier than modifying some
> other editor to do what you want, or modifying the way you issue
> instructions to fit a more visually oriented style.

well, therein lies the rub.  I don't know lisp, I don't know Emacs internals let
alone python mode.  solving the user interface problem by itself is pretty
difficult.  If the universe was granting the wishes, I would hope for a
development partner helping me build these interfaces and integrating them with
vr-mode (Emacs speech recognition mode that has some challenges)