Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ncar!gatech!linus!munck From: munck@linus.UUCP (Robert Munck) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Sprint Keywords: Sprint, Final Word, Borland, Emacs, Scribe Message-ID: <35802@linus.UUCP> Date: 8 Jul 88 16:56:47 GMT References: <398@csed-1.IDA.ORG> <741@cgh.UUCP> Reply-To: munck@faron.UUCP (Robert Munck) Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford MA Lines: 36 In article <741@cgh.UUCP> paul@cgh.UUCP (Paul Homchick) writes: (much about its ancestry, non-WYSIWYG-ness, etc.) >... But if you are looking for a powerful, >programmable document preparation system that can easily handle monster >manuals, then Sprint is a steal at the asking price. (It makes a pretty >good programmer's editor, too). FW is definitely a "cult editor." Only the real "in crowd" has ever heard about it, and they all love it. Amazingly, though, no one says much about what a great editor of programs you can make it, and the many advantages of that. For instance, I program mostly in Pascal, Modula-2, and Ada; I've written FW macros to help with the typing and indenting of each. The three languages are just similar enough that the differences could make me crazy, but I've managed to hide most of them in the editor interface. Comment delimiters are different in all three, but I just hit "'" (single-quote) and I get the delimiters for the language I'm currently editing. It also switches me to continuous spelling checker (beeps immediately after a mistake) and line-wrap (generates additional delimiters when wrapping as needed) and (my preference) right-justifies the comment against the right margin. Likewise FOR, IF, CASE, etc. statements have slightly different syntax, but the FW macros just generate the right skeleton and prompt me to fill in non-terminals. Other goodies: the macros know the format of the error-message output of the compilers I use, and can display each error message in turn in one window and position the cursor to the appropriate place in the code in the other. Just hitto jump to the next error. Another key will find the declaration of the identifier under the cursor and put it in a window. The real joy, of course, is that I use the same editor to type documents, with as many keys as possible having identical or analogous functions. As my brain gets older, it switches context more and more reluctantly, and FW is a great help. -- Bob Munck, MITRE -- Munck@MITRE-Bedford.ARPA, ...!linus!munck