I would like to start a discussion here concerning the Outline view problem with sources that contain bad syntax or do not accord in a way for the AST to find the procedures and functions.
We have a lot of code in .w and .p that is incompatible with OEA.
But it works fine in AppBuilder (structured procedures) and it compiles without errors/warnings.
Why is it still impossible (outline view was a problem in 10.1A) to not come up with a decent procedure/function list in the outline view?
I can't imagine this to be an enormous problem to fix...
Anybody that agrees with me that this is a major obstacle to shift all development onto OEA please participate...
David,
Can you please file a bug with tech support with the sample code where OEA outline fails?
Typically if OEA ABL parser does not understand some ABL syntax then outline view fails. OEA team addressed a lot of these outline view issues and we typically bump up the priority for outline view issues. So if you can provide a sample of the code that fails outline it would tremendiously help us reduce the number of corner cases further. Thanks
Sunil.
TechSupport informed.
I can imagine that due to the free nature of 4GL (END. = END PROCEDURE. to name one, or the conditional &IF with code in it) it's less evident to build the AST.
But as a developer I find it very unpleasant to use this great tool but not have the quality one might expect from a code editing tool.
If the AppBuilder is capable of generating a correct overview of the code, why is it so hard to accomplish the same in Architect?
One would almost suggest to send the file into the AppBuilder procedures that are responsible for generating the code sections and pass the results back to Architect...
Anyway,I'm glad to hear that Outline View problems are a top-priority.
David,
I have been using OEA since it's first beta release, and believe me, the outline view has come a long ways. Having said that, when you find a program that does not have a proper outline view it is best to try to identify the lines of code which are causing the break. That is sometimes tedious to do with commenting out code, etc. However, if you can isolate and provide a code snippet that causes the break, I have found that Progress is very willing and able to get it fixed in a near release.
I agree that and accurate outline view is almost essential to using OEA. This has been communicated to Progress on a number of occasions.
-Carson.