Re: DDS Support

[Douglas Handy <dhandy1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eric,

>What he wants is something I also think would be the cat's meow. That is
>within a RPG source editing session be able to prompt for your own procedure
>defs and fill in the blanks just like we can do with CL. Just think of the
>time it could save!

This isn't a language issue -- it is an editor or IDE issue.

This actually should be doable with a good, extensible PC editor like
CODE or Flex.  For example, the editor engine on which Flex is built,
the Starbase CodeWright engine (formerly Premia), has in their latest
engine a feature they call CodeSense.  This provides (optional) word
completion and function parameter help for C++ and some other
languages.  As you type a variable or function name, you can have it
offer to complete it from definitions it gleaned from the project
(think of the auto-complete in Quicken, for example).  Then for a
function name, once you type the opening ( it displays a tool-tip like
balloon listing the arguments, with the first one in bold face.  As
you enter arguments, the bold face follows in the balloon listing
until you add the final ) and the balloon goes away.  

Unfortunately, the version of the engine Aldon uses for Flex is
currently one release behind Starbase.  I was hoping to get Aldon to
get current on the engine, then I was going to try and interface RPG
prototypes and D-spec variable definitions into the CodeSense support.

Alas, Aldon hasn't upgraded yet and I don't want to write the
functionality from scratch -- I only want to make an interface to it.
And with the latest price reductions of CODE, I'm not sure Aldon is
going to be investing much more in improving Flex. :(

It really should only be a matter of time until CODE has this function
-- IBM seems serious about making it widely used and adding
functionality to it.  Since many IDE's have this type of thing these
days, it seems to me IBM will probably want to add this sometime.

Doug
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