[Openmcl-devel] Contrib: list-definitions.lisp

[Rainer Joswig]

Hi Glen,

that's a very useful contribution - Vielen Dank!

   I'll have to try it out some more...

I have a few remarks/suggestions. I'll see a slight conflict between a  
small tool and further extensions - hoping that CCL will get many more  
extensions like this - like MCL before.


* the presented list does not say what it displays. I would prefer a  
small print title for the menu ('all definitions', 'last  
definitions', ...).


* It occupies the right click menu, also with a lot of modifiers.  
Every other tool out there would like to get the right click menu,  
soon. On the Lisp Machine for example, right click in the editor  
brings up a small menu, where one of the menu items is 'List  
Definitions' and on invoking it, it displays a typeout window with  
mouse sensitive definitions names and their type (class, function,  
variable, ...). LispWorks has a right click menu that repeats some of  
the menus from the menubar (which I think is a bit of overkill for a  
Mac UI).

My suggestion (not specifically directed to Glen, but to the CCL crowd):

  CCL adds a general right click menu, where contributions can add  
their functionality to. Thus we can have other things like inspect,  
who calls, arglist, hyperspec lookup, ... on the right click menu, too.


* I wonder if displaying the results this way scales, it for example  
makes it difficult to invoke the functionality via a key command or an  
extended command. 'M-x list definitions' could/should (?) show the  
same result.


* CCL might also need a menu in the menubar for these contributions,  
or some place where they can be added under >Tools.


Generally I would say that the MCL UI had a mistake, that is easily  
repeatable with CCL: some commands were not easily discoverable. They  
were only available via obscure keyboard commands or mouse gestures. I  
would like to see the CCL UI to be more discoverable - that means that  
ANY useful user interface command has an entry in the menubar,  
somewhere. The expert can use the short cuts, once he/she has found  
the functionality - but for the newbie or the casual user, there  
should be an entry in the menubar's menus.

Anyway, great contribution - I'll try it out a bit...

Thanks,

Rainer Joswig



Am 17.08.2009 um 19:00 schrieb Glen Foy:

> I've added a position history list and a file history list to this  
> code.
>
> The position list is a most-recently-visited list of 25 definition
> positions.  The file list is a most-recently-visited list of 25
> files.  Both lists are persistent.
>
> The key chording now looks like this:
>
> Right-Click  -->  an alphabetical listing of the file's definitions.
> Command-Right-Click  -->  a positional listing of the file's
> definitions.
> Alt-Right-Click  -->  a listing of the most recently visited  
> definitions
> Alt-Command-Right-Click  -->  a listing of the most recently visited
> files.
>
>
> www.clairvaux.org/downloads/list-definitions-02b1.zip
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Rainer Joswig, Hamburg, Germany
http://lispm.dyndns.org/
mailto:joswig at lisp.de