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Re: st: RE: My Stata wishlist
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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