Some of us are re-thinking the UI for how the stepper presents itself. There seem to be a few obvious candidates:
1. Stays the same: ie, click on Step and it opens a new window. Classical, but perhaps not ideal. 2. Stays entirely in the editor frame, ie, rewrites the source program itself, with some means of restoring things. This sounds messy and undesirable; I'm just listing it for completeness and to express my opinion that I don't think we should go this way. 3. Works in the Interactions window: 3a. Coarse-grained: When you click Step, it's like Run -- the program is loaded into Interactions -- but every expression (including any non-definition in Definitions) is Step'ed rather than Run'ed. Clicking Run instead gives the present Interactions behavior. 3b. When you click Run, it loads the program into Interactions. For each expression you subsequently enter, you get the choice of run-as-run or run-as-step. My inclination is toward 3, and others at PLT Day also seemed to indicate that the Stepper should be "in the REPL". However, I did not get a clear sense of whether "in the REPL" meant 3a, 3b, or some other choice entirely. Benefits to 3a: - clarity: once you've made your choice, no confusion - entering expressions in Interactions is uncomplicated (type an expression and hit Enter, no need to indicate choices) - if you're in a "stepping mode", you don't have to remember to say it over and over - Step button disappears in language levels it can't support Benefits of 3b: - doesn't force premature choice - switching doesn't require entail Step/Run afresh (and thereby losing all previous REPL definitions/outputs) Overall, I personally prefer 3b: postponing decisions is good (people stress when forced to make a decision, which 3a induces), and by being able to "turn on" stepping any time they want, people will experiment with it more, which we want. The big difficulty I have is in designing the UI. It seems ideal to leave Enter to always mean "Run", but what means "Step"? Complex keystrokes are hard for some kids; putting things in menus forces attention away from the active part of the screen; having a button drag along as you type (sorta' like the EOF button for input-port input) seems extremely annoying. I just have no idea. Shriram _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
