Wishlist for MPS 2.0 and beyond...

Created July 28, 2009 03:59

I know, I know... MPS 1.0 hasn't even been out for a week yet and here I am making a wishlist for future versions. :-)

I am hoping this thread can be a place to throw around crazy or not-so-crazy ideas about what people would like to see in MPS, and discuss what people think about them. Feel free to join in!

The big one I'd love to see implemented is context-sensitive help for nodes. I think MPS has some really good opportunities to provide excellent context-sensitive help. MPS could add a Help/Documentation tab to each node in a language, to allow language authors to provide help that the built-in MPS editor could then make use of through tooltips, F1, code completion, offline documentation, etc...

What other stuff would people like to see in MPS?

4 comments

Permanently deleted user

Created July 28, 2009 07:13

Robert,

We have some kind of help. When in a language's aspect, you can press F1, and a browser with corresponding part of the user's guide will be opened.

Regards,

Konstantin

rhencke

Created July 28, 2009 13:58

Hey, Konstantin,

That is definitely very helpful... it has saved me from confusion on many occasions. Thank you!

I would love to see it expanded to an integrated help experience that can be customized for user-defined languages, without leaving MPS (tooltips, for example). But I realize that this is not a small task, and MPS 1.0 was just completed this week... I don't want to be greedy! :-)

Thanks for your work on MPS!

Robert

Mihail Muhin

Created July 29, 2009 20:22

Robert,

MPS has an ability of specifying a "helpURL" for any concept of a language (look at inspector while standing on a concept declaration).

For now, this URL is opened in browser when F1 is pressed on an instance of that concept.

Not very rich functionality, but we'll work on it. You can use it in newly created languages.

There is an example in ActionDeclaration concept.

Regards,

Mihail

rhencke

Created July 30, 2009 02:54

Thank you, Mihail. That is certainly a good thing to have! I think integrating the help experience into MPS would be a great benefit to easing adoption of DSLs. I will check out the ActionDeclaration concept demo.

Thanks! :-)

Robert

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