22 Jul
2025
22 Jul
'25
9:58 p.m.
i write go these days and use dozens of third party
libraries.
zed allows me to ask “what methods are available on this variable?”
Interestingly, 'samuel' has a feature not unlike the above, called
'advisor'. You can select a string in a file window, and look up
its definition. The manual has
Advisor
Advisor is a C advisor service. It will look-up the
selected library routine name or C Language keyword (while,
for, if, etc.) and return (in the command window)
information about the routine's calling sequence or use.
The inclusion of C language keywords may have been influenced by the
fact that 'samuel' also had an interface to 'cin', the C interpreter.
The 'database' file has a simple format, e.g.,
Jrect Bitmap Jrect={0, 0, XMAX, YMAX};
Point struct{ short x; short y; }Point;
add Point add(p, q) Point p, q; add two points
and the distributions I have seen have come with such files for 630
routines, X11 and C library functions. The 'advisor' was a separate
program, not built in to 'samuel', and I daresay this functionality
could be added to 'acme', via 'libacme'.
On Tue, 22 Jul 2025 at 20:16, Steve Simon <steve(a)quintile.net> wrote:
sam was my only editor from 92 when i discovered it
until last year.
under continual peer pressure i moved to zed on a mac which does many
clever things i don’t need and even occasionally gets in the way, but (for
me) it had one killer feature:
i write go these days and use dozens of third party libraries. zed allows
me to ask “what methods are available on this variable?”
i would love to go back to sam but i fear adding treesitter and the rest
needed to support this feature would kill one of us for sure.
-Steve