[Openmcl-devel] restart cases not visible

[Gary Byers]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Rick Taube wrote:

>>
>> Would it not be the :R option?
>
> yikes! thanks i didnt even see :r with all the other printout, i was
> expecting to see my restarts listed directly. is  there a way to do
> that? currently someone has to type
> :?
> :r

I think that this means that the break message should at least remind
you that :R is available. Maybe something like:

? foo
> Error: Unbound variable: FOO
> While executing: TOPLEVEL-EVAL, in process listener(1).
> Type :GO to continue, :POP to abort, :R to see other available restarts.


> and then select. it would be nice if i could get a display closer to
> sbcl or clisp ie:
>

What do you type in those other lisps in order not to have seen several
lines of output describing available restarts that you may not be too
interested in (while the actual error message scrolls off the screen) ?
Even if everything fits on the screen, there may be some issue of 
what your eye is drawn to.

Whether this is desirable or not is probably both a question of what
you're used to and expect and of how "interesting" the restarts are;
the restarts that're available for an UNBOUND-VARIABLE in the listener
are sort of "dog bites man"; those that're available in other situations
(especially situations that the user hasn't often encountered) are
possibly more interesting.  I'm not sure that the error system/
break loop can do a good job of guessing what's interesting in a 
given situation, so (I think) ...

- there should be something (special variable, function, break loop
command ...) that controls whether or not restarts are always presented
when a break loop is entered.
- at least in the case where this is toggled off, the break message
should remind the user that there's a fairly easy way (:r) to see
a menu of restarts.