[RkWard-devel] Send pre-defined block to R console

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi Dan,

On Friday 02 March 2007 22:20, Dan Dediu wrote:
> Maybe even having 4? different "<" and ">" symbols (colors? numbers? small
> letters) so that you can define more such "run blocks", each composed of
> 1+ "run segments". When clicking the "send block to R..." button, you can
> also select which color/number/letter to actually run or, by default, let
> the IDE send the one block containing the caret. Again, the "send block to
> R..." button sends the entire block (i.e. all its "run segments") to the R
> console, concatenated.

Having several different "<" and ">" symbols may be a good idea. However, then 
even more than with my suggestion, we need to limit the number of available 
symbols, as we'll need 2*(number of allowed sets) of them. Color coding the 
symbols is probably a good idea, but we should also add a small number or 
letter, so make sure they are also differentiable for color-vision impaired 
people.

One thing I'm a little concerned about is the number of different actions we 
will need for this. Currently it looks to me, like three different actions 
might be needed:
- Run current contiguous block (current==containing the cursor)
- Run current non-contiguous block (current==color/number/letter of the block 
containing the cursor, and all other blocks marked up in the same way)
- Run block... (with a dialog popping up, asking what to run)

Is there a way to trim this down any further? Perhaps the "Run block..." 
action (with the dialog) could be shown automatically, whenever there are 
several block around the current cursor position, and only then.

Pretty difficult to tell what is best. Currently I feel the solution I 
suggested on Friday may still be a better option, but maybe you'd have to 
actually give one solution or the other a try, to see, how it works out in 
practice.

> Also, it would be good if the "run segments" are somehow highlighted
> (color? - somehow reflecting the color/number/letter of the "run block")
> so that it is easy to identify them. This way it would be easier to
> identify the various "run segments" at a glance, as well...

I suppose this should be possible by using "reserved" marks, without a symbol, 
and not directly settable by the user. Somehow these can get different 
background colors (like e.g. a breakpoint in kdevelop will give the line a 
pink background), but I'm not sure, how to set those colors.

This would mean automatically marking all lines inside a block, anytime a 
block-symbol is added/removed, and anytime a line is added/removed (the 
editLineInserted/Removed() signals from KateDocument can probably be used for 
this).

> > I think we do agree the feature is worth having. Let's think about the
> > specs
> > for another short while, to see if we can come up with a real nice
> > solution.
> > After that, if you'd like to give the implementation a shot, that would
> > be
> > very much appreciated!
>
> Let's see what happens :)

Ok, I suggest the following plan: If there is no further feedback on this 
issue by Tuesday (or whenever you have time to work on it), start 
implementing something, according to which you feel is the best option 
discussed so far. When you're done, we'll try to get some testing on this, 
and see, whether it can be refined any further.

Regards
Thomas
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