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Re: st: RE: My Stata wishlist


From   Phil Schumm <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: RE: My Stata wishlist
Date   Tue, 4 Apr 2006 17:44:27 -0500

On Apr 4, 2006, at 12:49 PM, Ron�n Conroy wrote:
The word is that syntax highlighting is not going to happen. It conflicts with the idea(l) of -doedit- as a minimal editor and arguably the people who want it most are already using serious editors. (Don't shoot the messenger on this one!)
I disagree (not with Nick, of course, but with the point of view). There are probably a lot of Stata users out there who rely on Stata's own editor. It doesn't bloat an editor to make it do syntax colouring. And colouring would help the people who most need it - beginners who are getting to grips with writing Stata code.

It's important to remember that with Stata, "syntax coloring" (or, perhaps more accurately, "command highlighting") is a somewhat ambiguous concept. There are two main reasons for this:

1) Unlike a language with a small and stable set of commands, the list of Stata commands (i.e., all built-in commands together with all commands defined on the user's ado path) is large and always changing. In fact, it can even differ between users (depending upon which additional ado-files they have installed).

2) The same word can in one context be a command and in another refer to something else (e.g., a variable name).

For these reasons, any attempt to color commands in Stata would either (1) be incomplete and inconsistent, or (2) require considerably more machinery than is used (or even available) in most current coloring routines (at least the ones with which I am familiar). Personally, I'd rather have no coloring at all than have to deal with (1) (though I accept the fact that some may disagree with this).

In my personal setup (which I have been happy with for a long time), I have good coloring support for comments (in all their possible forms), which I find to be invaluable. I also use coloring for strings (i.e., words inside double quotes). I've occasionally thought it would be nice to have coloring for macro expansion (i.e., content inside `') and/or compound double-quoted strings, however these are often combined within nested expressions, and so I don't know in reality how useful they would be. Note that what I current use is essentially restricted to "syntax coloring". I did at one point consider (not seriously, but rather as a thought experiment) the idea of coloring the various pieces of a Stata command line based on parsing it's syntax (this would in theory get around the two problems identified above). However, apart from the obvious technical hurdles, it occurred to me that having too much color on the screen might actually become detrimental. For example, since comments are essentially the only things colored in my setup, they really jump out. This would be less true if a lot more of the content were colored.

As everyone knows, the issue of text editors is a religious one. In particular, the following is true: (1) any features you implement to please one person are very likely to simultaneously displease another, (2) attempts to get someone to change his or her editor are likely to be futile and, in some cases, arouse a hostile reaction, and (3) it's difficult and inefficient to use different editors for different tasks. In my case (and I suspect for many others), my text editor is the most important piece of software on my machine (except for Stata, of course!). I use it for everything, including writing code (in multiple languages, including Stata), writing papers and letters, editing configuration files, and inspecting files of all kinds. As a result, I know it like the back of my hand. And although I occasionally pop into other editors (including Stata's current do-file editor) for small tasks, I always return to my preferred editor for anything substantial. IOW, for users like myself, enhancements to Stata's built-in editor are not going to be of much value.

That said, I realize that many users may use the built-in editor much more frequently than I do, and I certainly wouldn't argue against adding a few additional lightweight features which might be helpful for such users. I do believe, however, that if you are a user who feels constrained by the limitations of the current built-in editor, you will in the long run be much happier if you take a little time to read the text editor faq, find an editor you like, and stick with it.


-- Phil

P.S. The url for the aforementioned faq is http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/ docs/textEditors.html.


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