Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:19333 comp.sys.mac.programmer:2094
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From: vita@lansoar.steinmetz (Mark F. Vita)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: LSP 2.0
Keywords: features editor
Message-ID: <11864@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 16 Aug 88 15:10:55 GMT
References: <450@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> <5116@husc6.harvard.edu>
Sender: news@steinmetz.ge.com
Reply-To: desdemona!vita@steinmetz.UUCP (Mark F. Vita)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 59

In article <5116@husc6.harvard.edu> singer@endor.UUCP (Rich Siegel) writes:
>	Because of the way the prettyprinter is central to Lightspeed 
>Pascal's design, it can't be turned off. 

I hope you will forgive me for saying so, but this is a pretty
piss-poor design.  The logical meaning of program text is completely
independent of how it is formatted on the screen.  I realize that you
guys do some lexical and syntactic analysis as program text is being
typed in, but I can't see why you couldn't analyze the text without
then proceeding to screw up the formatting.  Perhaps you could explain
this?

>However, the version 2 pretty
>pritnter can be customized, so formatting such as you have described
>is possible.

Yes, I saw this demo'ed at the Expo, and it does help a bit.  However,
there's no way you could allow for all the possible permutations of
styles that various people might prefer.  I mean, there might some
freak out there who prefers one token per line or something equally
bizarre.  The ultimate "customization" would be the ability to turn
the damn thing off and do your own formatting.

One thing I don't recall about the customization; will I be able to
get more than 1 statement per line? i.e.:

  i := 1;  j := 2;  k := 5;  m := 12;

rather than the ugly way LSP forces this now:

  i := 1;
  j := 2;
  k := 5;
  m := 12;

Sorry if I'm flaming a bit here, but I just *can't believe* that after
all the time that LSP had been around, and considering the *huge*
amount of bitching and moaning about the editor, that a major upgrade
is being released, AND YOU STILL CAN'T TURN OFF THE *&@#%^*@ PRETTY
PRINTING!!!

If it is indeed central to the design of LSP, I would suggest that you
need a redesign, in a big way.

Don't get me wrong, I love LSP.  I just annoys me that such a powerful
product is being crippled by a brain-damaged program editor.

>Rich Siegel
>Quality Assurance Technician
>THINK Technologies Division, Symantec Corp.
>Internet: singer@endor.harvard.edu
>UUCP: ..harvard!endor!singer
>Phone: (617) 275-4800 x305

----
Mark Vita                              ARPA: vita@ge-crd.ARPA
General Electric Company               UUCP: vita@desdemona.steinmetz.UUCP
Corporate R & D                              vita@desdemona.steinmetz.ge.com
Schenectady, NY                              desdemona!vita@steinmetz.UUCP