Programming Pad for RPL Programs

[rprosperi]

(05-21-2014 09:44 AM)HP67 Wrote:  I have been using stack diagrams and a text editor to do anything complicated (for me) in RPL. I cannot imagine a form would be very helpful. I don't know a good answer for this but I have been thinking somebody with the skills should be able to cook up an Emacs RPL mode that would at least help with formatting the code nicely. I believe there are several Windows-based tools that do that already. For me how the code looks helps or hinders understanding it. Maybe there is a way but the device seems to reformat the code more or less how it wants, and the useful newlines that I inserted to break up the logical statements disappear. For me this is one of the hardest parts of writing RPL and maintaining it on the device. So for stuff with a lot of stack-dancing I have been doing all the maintenance in a text editor and keying the diffs on the device manually.

I used to use forms a lot in the keypunch days but have not used any since. I can see where they would be useful in gathering thoughts, etc. when writing any significant code that has to be keyed in on a calculator keypad though.

There is an entire Emacs environment that actually runs on the 48GX (and later brethren). Have not used it myself as I fear I may be forced to drink the Kool-aid by the Emacs religious zealots. I still prefer TECO (which is what Emacs was written in, waaay back then). And yes, Windows versions do exist (which is truly amazing).

I share your frustration with the on-device editors re-arranging according to it's own ideas of structure, but I guess it's fair given the environment it's running in.

The pros suggest simply to "use the command line tools from HP to build, then test in the emulator" so that your source with comments/structure/etc are preserved (you see Ray, I do listen). But that seems too much like I'm at my job...

All the code on 48/49/50, etc. I do is really only for me, so I prefer to dabble on the machine itself with Jazz, MASD, etc. as it's much more fun. But as I delve deeper into SysRPL, it gets more frustrating so I may set up the on-PC dev environment to give it a try.