[climacs-devel] Bugs reporting :)

[Christophe Rhodes]

Ignas Mikalajunas <ignas.mikalajunas at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi, i like the idea of Common lisp emacs like editor, and i would like
> to test it, but it seemsso unuseable to me that i just can't even test
> it :(, the bugs i have managed to encounter in like 3 minutes of using
> climacs were:

Just so you know, this is the third draft of a response to your
e-mail: the previous two were deleted on grounds of excessive
temperature.  This is of course my fault for reacting badly to what
you wrote, but you might be interested that it provoked that reaction.

Put bluntly: climacs doesn't really need testers at the moment: it
needs people who will do more than use it for just like 3 minutes, by
fixing the problems that they encounter rather than simply recounting
them.  Testing and posting bug reports has a certain value, but there
simply isn't the manpower to fix bugs in any kind of timely manner
without more effort on the reporter's part, say by providing a patch
to fix the bad behaviour.
  
> 1. C-x C-f Ret
>
> It tries to open my home directory and of course fails (I know there
> is no dired, but crashing my editor because of that is evil)
>
> 3. Alt+x is not invoking "Extended command", only Esc+x did that ...

Both of these, I would guess, would be easy to fix.  It is entirely
reasonable for now, say, to provide an ABORT restart inside the
climacs command loop so that errors can restart the loop, rather than
aborting to top level.  Fixing your Alt key would involve slightly
more work: playing around with xev and finding out what it actually
generates, for instance; in both of these cases, though, I suspect it
would take less time than it did to send your report.

> 4. Common Lisp syntax mode is only coloring the first line of the
> buffer, (the rest are highlighted as if they were comments) in cmucl,
> and is highlighting everything up-to first ";" in sbcl.

Common Lisp syntax mode is, until tomorrow (I believe), a project
being undertaken by students at the University of Bordeaux as part of
their degree.  Given this, I would expect it to be under development
by those students, and would refrain from commenting too much on it
until past their submission deadline.

> 2. C-x C-f /home/ignas/test.lisp , then Alt+Tab to another window
> (covering the climacs window), Alt+Tab back, Ret
>
> * (climacs-gui::climacs)
>
> debugger invoked on a SIMPLE-ERROR in thread 17344:
> #<GOATEE:SIMPLE-SCREEN-AREA X 99:288 Y 0:14 {9A06481}> is not
> contained in #<CLIMACS-GUI::MINIBUFFER-PANE CLIMACS-GUI::INT
> {9861BF9}>.

Now this one is annoying; it has caused me problems, too.  No-one
seems to know why it happens, so here is your chance to elucidate a
mystery...

Cheers,

Christophe