#+TITLE:RTE: Bret Victor's interfaces, the UNIX way

#+begin_abstract

The gap between the time the user edits a text file and the time he sees the effects of his modification creates a cognitive charge that hinders creativity. In his presentation at CUSEC 2012, Bret Victor calls for new interfaces where the effects of a modification of the source file is immediatly visible to the user. This software implements this idea, in a generic, UNIX-y way. By defining a couple Makefile rules, anybody can edit \LaTeX files in a WYSIWYG kind of way or immediately see tests passing (or breaking) as soon as the last character of a function is inputted.

#+end_abstract

• See it in action A screencast is available : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS7jBvCrR9s

• Source video Bert Victor's Inventing on principle demos : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII

• Installation and usage ** Dependencies Python interface for FUSE (one that works, that is ;) : https://github.com/terencehonles/fusepy

  For LaTeX editing: xpdf

  For HTML editing: uzbl ** Usage See the screencast for a specific example.

  Create a Makefile with these 4 rules :

  • =RTEcompile= : This rule will be called after each modification of the text file
  • =RTEview= : This rule will be called after each successful call to =RTEcompile=
  • =RTEstartView= and =RTEstopView= : Called when starting and quitting RTE.

  Example of such rules can be found in the testLatex and testPython directories.

  Now call RTE (create /tmp/mnt if need be): : $FOO/RTEFS.py /tmp/mnt

  And fire your text editor of choice : emacs --funcall launch-RTE foo.bar : vim foo.bar #don't forget to launch the UpdateFile function *** Emacs Copy the content of [[RTE.el]] into your .emacs *** Vim The code of the UpdateFile function is in RTE.vim

• Technical principle ** Editor's job

  • If dir $RTE/input/ is writable
    • Write the content of the buffer, under the corresponding file name
  • Wait for buffer to change ** RTEAgent's job *** Setup
  • Create a ramdisk
  • copy contents of $CWD to ramdisk
  • Make Makefile rule RTEstartView

  FIXME: A complete chroot in the ramdisk, with all the files accessed during compilation would be better. Before implementing that, however, I should check wether it actually speed things up.

  FIXME: For python programs, maybe make use of [[http://pgbovine.net/incpy.html][this interpreter]], not to have to compute everything again each time. *** Loop

  • Wait for input in $RTE/input/
  • on fclose(), disallow writing in $RTE/input/
  • Copy newly gained input on the ramdisk (overwriting whatever's in there)
  • Make Makefile rule RTEcompile in a new thread
  • if the rule execute with no error
    • Make Makefile rule RTEview
  • Allow writing in $RTE/input/ ** Test Run : : pushd testLatex; python ../testRTEAgent.py; popd