Re: [Caml-list] What does Jane Street use/want for an IDE? What about you?

[Kuba Ober <ober.14@osu.edu>]

> I use 16 (4x4) virtual Fvwm desktops with free mouse movement between
> them and a small map of the desktops in the lower-right corner (+
> xosview). The majority of the population finds this disturbing, I'm not
> really sure why. I hate clicking or typing to switch from a window to
> another so I just move my arm in order to place the mouse cursor over
> the right window in the right virtual desktop as shown on the map.
> That's the feature I was dreaming of until I discovered its existence,
> quite a long time ago.
>
> There are no icons or toolbar. A left-click anywhere on the background
> displays a menu with the applications I commonly use, and that's enough.

I already thought that Camelia and similar apps should provide essentially
two UI modes: the standard, all-exposed "clutterface" typical of most
applications, and a "nakedface" where just as you say there's just the main
window (or two), even without decorations, and nothing more.

Camelia provides panes for debugger and toplevel, so those of course could be
held in a virtual space in the "nakedface" model.

Heck, as far as I can imagine it, it souldn't be that big of a deal to have
the virtual desktops implemented in Camelia itself: depending on which 
direction and how fast the mouse crosses/touches the window edge from
inside, it changes the viewport to a different window.

I had similar mode in mind for a PCB editing application I'm working on, so
I do actually find your ideas appealing and worthwhile. Especially that
it's relatively trivial to implement little goodies like that. I vehemently
hate window decorations on CAD programs: that's why I liked the old
school applications like Protel for DOS, AutoCad, most of the stand-alone CAD
workstations: they displayed things full-screen since screen real estate
was really expensive, and often had single-key shortcuts to swap the screen
with a textmode interface for options, command input etc.

> Build tools:
> * omake for large OCaml projects (which represents now more than 95% of
> my time)

Will check on omake, for sure.

Thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming. I guess I have to think of
"classic" and "naked" interface modes for Camelia, then.

Kuba