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From: gandreas@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Glenn Andreas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: LSP 2.0
Keywords: features editor
Message-ID: <464@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU>
Date: 20 Aug 88 15:50:12 GMT
References: <450@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> <5116@husc6.harvard.edu> <11864@steinmetz.ge.com> <5131@husc6.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: gandreas@ub.d.umn.edu.UUCP (Glenn Andreas)
Organization: University of Minnesota, Duluth
Lines: 64

In article <5131@husc6.harvard.edu> singer@endor.UUCP (Rich Siegel) writes:
>
>	It seems to me what no matter what I say, those who hate the 
>pretty printer will continue to say "It sucks, Lightspeed Pascal needs
>to be redesigned without the pretty printer, I don't like the way
>it formats", and so on.
>
>	But I'll try to explain.
>
[ a very good explaination of the internals of LSP & its editor ]
>
>	Also: based on the people I talked to at MacWorld, more people liked
>the pretty-printer than hated it, and it's more than an even split - a
>large majority liked it.
>
>	It's just that the people who don't like it bitch louder...
>
>
>	Now that I've given an explanation of why the pretty-printer is there,
>I am going to waste no more of my time and no more of the net's bandwidth
>arguing with people who don't like it.
>
>
>		-Rich

OK OK OK OK.

I unfortunately brought this whole thing about with my question about the
editor in LSP 2.0.  And with Rich's comment a while ago about being able to
customize the format just about any way, I was satisfied.  Also, some one
from Apple (or was it Claris?) mailed me a comment that it just takes a
while to get use to.  I was satisfied.  So I called MacConnection.  One day
and $68 later, I had version 1.11.  Fine, I'll try it out.

At first I was disappointed.  I couldn't handle the reserved words being in
lowercase and bold.  Being bold they stuck out too much, and being in
lowercase, I couldn't scan for them (I'm use to uppercase letters for
reserved words - I guess that comes from reading the source for MacApp :-).
So I fixed that.  I used fedit and found the reserve word, changed them to
uppercase.  I used Macsbug and found where the trap for TextStyle was, and
changed it so it always is in plain (this also inhibits the outlining of
errors).  Now I could stand using it.

And I used it.  A lot (even crashing it a few times - it sometimes doesn't
like clicking on program windows when you are debugging).  And while the
format isn't the exact way I like it, it isn't terrible.  And I got use to
not using the return key.  And I started to like it.  The auto-formatting
became a non-issue.  The speed and the debugging powers became important.

So, in summary, for those of you who won't buy it because of the editor,
listen to one who use to be one of you.  Buy it.  It's not as bad as you
imagine.  You may even end up liking it (give it a few days).  And the other
features of the environment way out weigh any bias about the editor.  If
anything, my complaints about the editor are the lack of an undo, arrow
keys, and a zoom box on the window.  Not the auto-formatting - it's just
fine.  Trust me.  Buy it, you'll like it.  I did.

I hope this puts it all to rest.

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= "When I was young, all I wanted was to be  | - gandreas@ub.d.umn.edu -    =
=  ruler of the universe.  Now that isn't    |   Glenn Andreas              =
=  enough" - Alex P. Keaton                  |                              =
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