[IronPython] Eventhandling in the IDE: Who is the audience?

[Hank Fay]

The best suggestion I can give is this: have someone show you the VFP9 IDE.
 There are things it doesn't have (code folding e.g.), but things it does
have -- e.g., each method of an object can have it's own editing window, so
you can see 2 or more methods at once.  There's something like it now in
VS2010 from a demo I saw, but it's nowhere as easy to use.

The biggest lack in VS2010 I hope will be addressed when you get to
programming the IDE in IPy.  In VFP, to get the active object in the
designer, as an object, it's a single function: aselobj(), which returns the
object (or objects if multiple selections) in an array.  Those objects can
then be programmed against, adding or setting properties, reading or
inserting code into methods.  It makes creating builders to do scut work
really easy.  Saves on carpal tunnel too. <s>  I hope you have something
like that as a design goal.  I know it can be done: a friend of mine wrote a
version of aselobj() in VS in 2005 (I had been told by certain VFP/VSX team
members that it was impossible, and Frank loves nothing better than a good
challenge, although it took him 2 weeks rather than his customary 2 to 6
hours for significant new features).

The intellisense in VFP was very good, and easily extensible.  It worked
against live objects in the debugger of course, but also against entries the
developer could add, e.g., all the few hundred library routines we created.
 These additional entries are contained where data should be stored, of
course, in a real table <s>, but I guess XML would do, although it's slow
compared to a seek on an indexed table.  So when I type in update_file_ftp(
all the parameters show up, even though there has not been any mention of
the routine in the program, etc.  It's a huge help.  Parenthetically, what
we do is scan all the relevant libraries in a project as startup to see if
there are entries to change or add: that's a trival task when the timestamp
has been kept in the table with the intellisense entry.

Thanks for listening.  I haven't had this experience since the early
(1992-3) Fox days.

Hank







On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Dino Viehland <dinov at microsoft.com> wrote:

>  This is great feedback and I’ve added it to a designer TODO list.  I’ll
> spend some time in the (hopefully near) future going through and improving
> the designer experience.  If you have any other thoughts on things we should
> do in that space (or shouldn’t do J) I’d love to hear it and I’ll add it
> to the list.  Thanks!
>
>
>
> *From:* users-bounces at lists.ironpython.com [mailto:
> users-bounces at lists.ironpython.com] *On Behalf Of *Hank Fay
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 05, 2010 8:58 PM
> *To:* Discussion of IronPython
> *Subject:* [IronPython] Eventhandling in the IDE: Who is the audience?
>
>
>
> In VB, eventhandling can be done by switching to the "partial class",
> selecting the object in the left dropdown at the top of the editor, and then
> selecting the event in the right dropdown.  The function gets created, and
> of course in VB uses Handles in order to connect the event-handler.
>
>
>
> This is a style of working with events that is familiar with at least a
> hundred thousand VFP programmers who have been stranded by MS, and are
> looking for a way into .Net.  And I believe it's familiar with the million
> plus VB programmers who have not made the switch to .Net (the last figure I
> read was over 2 million, but that was nearly 2 years ago).
>
>
>
> I would make the argument that this way of working is straight-forward,
> involves less typing, and allows clearer thinking: the same kinds of
> arguments made for Py in general and IPy in particular.  I can create a
> framework that makes working with data, and the IDE, easy for users, and
> straight-forward in a way that will be familiar to VFP developers -- and am
> doing so (open source fwiw), hence my special interest in making the rest of
> the development experience as familiar as possible.
>
>
>
> So, this is a request.  I'll have others, but much of what I need is
> already in the plan (working with VSX in Python is huge, btw, so thanks in
> advance for that one).
>
>
>
> thanks,
>
>
>
> Hank Fay
>
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