[slime-devel] Restart Numbering (was: Daily ChangeLog diff)

[Madhu]

| diff -u slime/ChangeLog:1.1880 slime/ChangeLog:1.1882
|
| +2009-10-23  Tobias C. Rittweiler <tcr at freebits.de>
| +
| +	Restarts in SLDB are now numbered reversely. The rationale is that
| +	always-existing restarts are likely to be associated with the same
| +	number now.
| +
| +	* slime.el (sldb-insert-restarts): Number restart reversely.
| +	(sldb-restart-number-for-swank): New; recompute the unreversed
| +	number for the swank side.
| +	(sldb-restart-number-at-point): Previously `sldb-restart-at-point'.
| +	(sldb-invoke-restart): Adapted accordingly.

I see 2 issues here, but I think the idea is bad for several reasons
including:

1. It fails to meet the stated purpose.  Always existing restarts
   (provided by slime already had the same number); If the goal was to
   match the order of presentation with what the implementation debugger
   would provide consider

   Inner restarts have lower numbers than outer restarts. See how
   implementations number the restarts in

   (with-simple-restart (barf-outer "barf")  (with-simple-restart
       (foo-inner "foof") (error "bARF")))
   
   Every implementation's debugger numbers a restart for FOO-INNER at a
   smaller number than the restart for BARF-OUTER.  SLDB now reverses
   this ordering.


2. Reversing the printed order of restarts means, when you have more
   than a handful of restarts, you cannot restart 0 or 1 (the "first
   restart the user would want to invoke"), because it is hidden; SLDB
   only lists the first few restarts, you have to move the cursor down
   to the "--more--" button and hit RET to see more restarts. (This
   slime UI element is an intensely painful part of slime, subject of a
   different rant).


3. This is confusing to my muscle memory which has been trained to
   hitting 0 for the first restart expected from the lisp program being
   evaluated (an argument i started making in 2008-08-25, but did not
   complete). Consider the the numeric keypad. However I assume you did
   want to ensure the restart 0 was `return to slime top-level.')

--
Madhu