[FR-devel] Thoughts on FR (editing, code-assist, refactoring)

[Hal E. Fulton]

Rich,

My power supply on my Linux box died... so
I currently can't get at my code.

But I've been thinking further about this.

I'll fwd to the list also to get others' 
ideas.

It seems to me that the Scintilla interface is
rich and powerful, but not necessarily intuitive
or Rubylike (or even OO).

What I'm thinking of is a class that will serve
as an additional layer of abstraction above the
Scintilla interface -- call it FRedit for now, 
in the absence of a cool name.

The advantages of this would be:
1. A more Rubylike OO interface
2. Independence from Scintilla API (for the time
   when other editors are pluggable)

I know this seems like "wrapping a wrapper" -- but
I think it's worthwhile. Only downside might be
degraded performance. (An alternative might be to
change scintilla.iface, but those changes might be
really massive.)

Then on top of that, I'm (tentatively) thinking of 
a class that would offer access to FRedit (through
delegation) and likewise to the parser. (If we're
going to do refactoring or even code-assist 
operations, we often need access to the parser as
well as the editor.) Advantages are:

1. Parser also (hopefully) becomes pluggable
2. Class can save state from parser and editor so
   that they play well together
3. A single unified class can be used for macros/
   scripting, code assist, and refactoring.

What are your thoughts here (and others')? Am I
off-base in some way?

Hal

--
Hal Fulton
address@hidden