10 The Interactive Editor

10.3 Menu commands and special features

The editor offers all of the standard File and Edit menu commands a user expects to find on a text editing window (such as New, Open, Cut, Copy, Paste, Find/Replace, and so forth). The editor also has the standard Functional Developer menus, such as Go, Project, Application, and Window. This section describes the additional menu commands provided by the Functional Developer editor.

The Go menu commands open an appropriate window, usually the browser or the project window, to show you the corresponding item. For instance, Go > Breakpoints opens the project window for the active project and displays the Breakpoints tab page. Likewise, when you choose Go > Edit Compiler Warnings an editor window opens on the source code corresponding to the first compiler warning for the project. The cursor is automatically positioned at the problem area in the code. In Emacs mode, you can use Ctrl+. (Ctrl+ period) to view the source for the next compiler warning, and so forth.

The Object menu commands require that you place the cursor in an element name in the editor window. The commands then allow you to browse that element or edit the related code. For instance, if the cursor is placed in a class name, Object > Edit Subclasses opens an editor window to display a composite buffer containing the subclasses of that class.

The editor's Project menu contains two special commands beyond the standard Project commands on other Dylan windows:

Compile Selection: Allows you to compile a selection of code independently while an application is running. This is one of the editor's special interactive capabilities. For details and an example of interactive development using Compile Selection, see Section 10.4, "Using the editor for interactive development".
Macroexpand Selection: When the cursor is placed in a macro in the editor window, choosing this command expands the macro code in the buffer so that you can see the actions it performs. Use Edit > Undo (or the toolbar/keyboard equivalents) to return to the original contents of the buffer.

The editor's Application menu is the same as for the debugger or the project window, except that it contains extra breakpoint commands. These breakpoint commands are also part of the shortcut menu. See Section 6.11.6, "Breakpoint options" for details.

If you are using the Enterprise Edition and have Microsoft Visual SourceSafe installed, the editor displays a SourceSafe menu. This menu is Functional Developer's interface to source control. For more information, see "Source control with Visual SourceSafe" on page 160.