ez—for the Programmer

AUIS had its roots in 1982 when Carnegie Mellon University and the IBM Corporation decided to jointly develop a campus computing facility based on personal computers to replace the time-sharing system then on campus. IBM provided not only generous funding, but also some talented individuals and access to IBM development programs.

The result was a graphical user interface we know as the Andrew User Interface System and a file system, the Andrew File System. The file system formed the basis of Transarc Corporation's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) and is offered as part of the Open System Foundation software.

The Andrew Consortium, composed of a number of corporations and universities, funds the current development of AUIS. AUIS is available on a wide variety of platforms including Linux, AIX, Solaris, Ultrix, HP UX as well as others.

In early June, version 6.3 of the Andrew User Interface System (AUIS) was released by the Andrew Consortium. This led to the release of auis63L0-wp.tgz which contains just a small portion of AUIS that is suitable as a word processor.

Now another package has been released, auis63L0-src.tgz, to sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/X11/andrew. This is a set of additions to the word processing package to support the programmer. This article will describe the support ez provides to ease the coding and analysis of our programs. Future articles in Linux Journal will describe other pieces of AUIS.

As a programmer, we use the same simple tool, ez, as we did for word processing. Our source program is loaded (or created) and displayed in a window. But unlike ez the word processor, the data in the program source (document) does not directly control what happens. Rather the editor, ez, actually is “aware” of the syntax of the source language that is being edited and provides a specialized view of the source.

In the same way that a graph is really just a different representation of an array of numbers, ez has the ability to provide unique views of program source. This allows the editor to help you when entering the program source. ez also provides assistance in compiling your program. Finally, ez can help you analyze your program, to assist in understanding where data is referenced or where routines are defined.

ez provides support for a number of languages including assembler, Pascal, Modula, Lisp, C, and C++. It provides a unique view for each language source file. The view is triggered by the extension of the file you edit. For instance, ez will treat the file test.c as a C program and will treat the file test.C as a C++ program.

Figure 1. -fg black -bg lavenderblush

When you first edit a C program, you will see something like Figure 1. You see immediately there are many things to make the program easier to read:

Figure 2. Comment in progress

Figure 3. C-clause in progress

As you enter your code, ez will react as soon as it figures out what you are coding. In Figure 2 you can see a comment being formed. Notice the color and font have already been applied, even though the comment is not closed. In Figure 3 you can see how ez handles pair delimiters like (), {}, and []. When you enter the trailing delimiters (e.g.,“}”) then ez will reverse-video the entire region to the matching delimiter. As you continue typing, the reverse-video is removed.

ez will attempt to keep its view correct at all times, but you can confuse it. For instance you might code a string without the comment delimiters and then later add the /* */ operators. When this happens, you only need select the menu item Redo styles on the Source Text menu card. This will cause the entire screen to be redrawn applying the view.

Figure 4. Reformatting your C source

ez will also attempt to help as you enter text by automatically indenting your source lines as you enter them. You do not need to enter a tab to indent, since ez will do this for you automatically. Unlike other aspects of the view, this does modify the source since it inserts tabs to align the text. You can also ask ez to reformat your source at any time. Simply select the area you want to reformat (i.e., so it is shown in reverse-video) and select the menu item Format line/region on the Source Text menu card. You can see the result of this action on our original source program in Figure 4. One convenient feature is that when you enter a trailing delimiter (like a “}”), ez will reverse-video the region to the matching delimiter (“{”). If you press tab at this point, ez will reformat the selected region, saving you the need to later re-select the area with the mouse.

There is a great deal of tailoring that can be done to control the behavior of your source view. If you do not like the way ez indents your source code, simply avoid the use of the Format line/region menu item and your source will not be modified. Regardless how your source looks, the lines of your original source are not modified unless you select this menu item.

Figure 5. Source from Fig. 4 in wider window

Just as with a text document, ez will automatically wrap lines based on the width of the window. For instance, Figure 5 shows the same source as in Figure 4. Notice the comments and source lines are re-aligned to make it more readable.

In the past I would spend a great deal of energy making my source look “pretty”. It's important to me that my source look consistent since it makes the code much easier to read. Since I have been using ez, I no longer make any effort to format code, but rather concentrate on entering it. When I'm done, I reformat it with ez and I'm done. I especially like the reflowing of comments. This has caused me to change my commenting style. I seldom put comments on the same line as code any more. Rather I rely on paragraphs at the beginning of a block of code to explain what will follow. I much prefer this approach in coding. Others may not like this style. I use the parts of ez that I find useful, and ignore the others. I encourage you to do the same.