From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id SAA19166; Wed, 1 May 2002 18:09:47 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA19162 for ; Wed, 1 May 2002 18:09:46 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from saul.cis.upenn.edu (SAUL.CIS.UPENN.EDU [158.130.12.4]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g41G9jD16206 for ; Wed, 1 May 2002 18:09:45 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by saul.cis.upenn.edu (8.12.2/8.12.2) with SMTP id g41G9hmI026858; Wed, 1 May 2002 12:09:43 -0400 (EDT) To: "Warp" cc: caml-list@inria.fr Reply-to: bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml IDEs for beginners? In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 30 Apr 2002 18:56:01 +0200. <008201c1f067$e890b560$5000a8c0@warp> Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 12:09:43 EDT Message-ID: <26857.1020269383@saul.cis.upenn.edu> From: "Benjamin C. Pierce" Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk > About this subject, I would like to make a public Request for Features, in > order to gather many opinions and tips about that IDE . ( which will be at > the same time for beginners AND for experienced people ). My own main request for a beginner IDE is that it be (or have a switch that makes it) _absolutely_ as simple as possible. It should provide a few standard cursor movement and editing keybindings, standard mouse-based selection, standard "Open" and "Save as" dialogs, a way of taking the editing buffer and running it through OCaml, and ideally an OCaml top level for direct interaction. Maybe a documentation browser. Nothing else. At another level of ambition, an extremely useful feature would be the ability to accept only a subset of OCaml -- e.g., requiring types of all function parameters to be declared explicitly, providing only some simple kinds of pattern matching, etc. The DrScheme environment does a great job with this. (Actually, the reason for wishing for language subsetting is not only to prevent students from going outside of a small subset -- it also helps prevent *professors* from accidentally generating examples that use more of the language than they'd intended!) Benjamin ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners