Re: [MacPerl] Experimental External Editor Interface available

[Matthias Ulrich Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>]

John Springer <springer@scruznet.com> writes:
>Sorry, but I don't get it.

My fault. My message has been much too brief. The basic idea is that what I
released yesterday is the MacPerl side of things. This would have to be
augmented with an editor specific package, which already exists on Alpha and to
some extent on BBEdit.

>There's a BBEdit menu in the MacPerl application, and I can open a file,
>but I can't compile or run from BBEdit, nor can I run the BBEdit script
>from MacPerl without a separate Open... dialog.

Right. All of these belong in the BBEdit package (anyone willing to do it?
Otherwise I can do it myself).

>What am I missing?  I don't understand what the advantage of having the
>BBEdit menu in MacPerl is.

The one feature that yesterday's release offers that you couldn't have before
is that you now can open droplets and CGIs in BBEdit. The idea is that for
every editor that supports part of the core AppleEvent suite you can:

 - Open any MacPerl file in that editor by selecting "Edit..." in MacPerl.
 - Modify that file.
 - After you are done, switch back to MacPerl and give "Update".

Now, like most user interface stuff in MacPerl, this protocol is scriptable and
recordabe, so you can run this protocol from BBEdit and Alpha if you want
to. However, implementation of editor specific code has been left as an
exercise to the reader :-)

>Seems like the perfect thing would be to have a MacPerl script menu added
>to the BBEdit menu bar, so I could compile and run from there.

Right, that's the idea, but the step from yesterday's release to that idea is
editor specific and doesn't require any more support in MacPerl. I merely
wanted to get the MacPerl part out.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher   <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>   http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri
  "And that's why I am going to turn this world upside down, and make
   of it a fire so *bright* that someone real will notice"
                                -- Vernor Vinge, _Tatja Grimm's World_