Re: Drag-and-drop editing - PLEASE!

From: Vernon Hamberg

I've been really surprised that drag-drop editing has not been
available in RSE - it is ubiquitous in every other editor of any
flavor I know of - for text or for documents or for source or
whatever. Please, a request to the team to put more of this feature
into the product. Even things like drag-drop to move members from one
list to another. This capability is one I miss so - it would speed up
things a lot for me.

Drag and drop for what?  To move chunks of source?  I teach people this
tool, and I can tell you that the vast majority of green screen programmers
don't need drag and drop source editing.  Many have a hard enough time using
keyboard techniques such as marking lines of text and using Ctrl-C and
Ctrl-V (which is essentially all you save with a drag and drop).
 
There are some places in RSE (such as maintaining filters and filter pools),
where drag and drop would definitely make life better, but I think we're
reaching a point where we're starting to see a lot of "nice to haves", as
opposed to added functionality.  You know what I really want?

* A preference to auto-add semicolons when I forget them (and a keyboard
shortcut to toggle the setting while I'm entering a multi-line statement).

* Intelligence in the EVENT file handling to make sure people don't collide
when more than one person does a search at the same time.  This is a nasty
problem, and forcing people to set *CURLIB is not a solution.

* Better reporting and troubleshooting when debug fails. (I'd like a way to
simulate an SEP all the way through the servers, sort of like a PING
command, to identify where the request is hanging.)

* And of course, a replacement for SDA.

Those are real-world usability issues that would make everybody's job easier
and make it easier to get WDSC into the hands of green screen programmers.
After that, there are still things that would make life easier for lots of
people:

* The ability to click on an existing prototype and modify it using the
procedure wizard.

* Sort and subset the Outline view.

* Easy keyboard macros (standard record and playback).

* A build feature--I'm sure IBM wants to avoid stepping on any vendor toes,
but the ability to support something at the level of Alan Campin's Make
utility would be very helpful.  As Aaron points out, it would be nice if IBM
would help us move into the ILE world.

I'd like to see ANY of these before I see a lot more drag-and-drop.  Don't
get me wrong; drag-and-drop is definitely a convenience, but you can get by
without it with a few extra clicks.  If you're familiar enough with the tool
that drag-and-drop makes you significantly faster, then I daresay you're
already at the point where the tool is making you more productive.  But
there are some gaping holes where the product really needs to improve.

Maybe we need to set up two lists of enhancements: required functionality
and nice to have.  Or even one of those voting lists like the RPG
development team puts out, where you can spend theoretical development
dollars on various features.

Joe