Re: GSoC

[Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>]

On 2017-02-08 12:12, Tom Tromey wrote:
> Simon> It would be interesting to gather some feedback from those who 
> lead
> Simon> this initiative in the past.  Would you suggest trying to go for 
> it
> Simon> again?  Why, why not?
> 
> I did it in the past but stopped because I wasn't spending enough time
> mentoring.  I think it is worth doing but you have to be more organized
> and committed than I was.

Ok, thanks for your feedback.

So since nobody spoke against it, I'll submit an application today, 
we'll see where it leads.

> Simon> On my side, there's the output colouring support which I'd like
> Simon> to see become a reality some day :).
> 
> I actually did this, but I didn't submit it.  I got sort of mired in
> design choices.
> 
> The first approach I took was to just hack some color stuff directly 
> the
> CLI ui-out, and add a way to "set color <mumble>" (I don't actually
> remember exactly how I spelled this, and the branch is long gone).  
> This
> required some hacks to get the column computation to be correct so that
> wrapping wouldn't suffer.  I think I just made it so the color string,
> whatever it was, was assumed not to take any space -- a hack since this
> wasn't actually enforced.
> 
> This was a bit too inflexible for me so I abandoned it.
> 
> 
> The second approach I took (I still have this branch) was to let the
> Python layer insert an object that would replace the CLI ui-out object.
> Then colorizing and other reformatting -- the Python ui-out object is
> "MI-like" and so had access to more data -- could be done by writing
> some Python code.
> 
> I liked this approach ok but it needed some hacks (maybe since 
> obsoleted
> due to Pedro's recent work, not sure).  Also I think it suffered 
> because
> there was no way to get the wrap hints into the Python layer.

Well first of all, what is your idea of how the coloring should be?

As a first step, I am envisioning, at least as a first step, to have 
symbols, value, file paths, etc, each printed in their own color, so 
that it's easy stop quickly spot the relevant information in a printout. 
  I have made a mockup here:

   http://nova.polymtl.ca/~simark/ssg/filemC7ZUZ.png

However I have found that it's easy to go overboard with it, at which 
point it looses of it usefulness, despite being a nice Christmas tree:

   http://nova.polymtl.ca/~simark/ssg/fileEv2diU.png

> And, finally, for something like "set color", there's no good way to
> implement completion because there isn't a list of the table- and
> column-names.  This could be done by introducing enums or something 
> like
> that, but at that point the patch is going to be beyond what I would
> want to commit to.

I don't understand this part.  Which tables/columns?

Thanks!

Simon