Date:         Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:51:35 -0800
Reply-To:     "Michael L. Davis" <michael@BASSETTCONSULTING.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Michael L. Davis" <michael@BASSETTCONSULTING.COM>
Subject:      Re: Survey: Who uses keyboard abbreviations
In-Reply-To:  <AcWtj.1$mi3.135301@news.sisna.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

Hello Richard and other friends,

I'm not as shocked as Richard.  At recent conferences, my impression has
been that SAS has promoted the view that customers should be accessing SAS
through EG rather than through Display Manager (DM) and the Enhanced Editor
(EE).

I second the notion that if you want SAS to enhance EE, you should let SAS
know.  I suspect that conversations with your site's SAS Account Manager
are more effective in getting changes to EE implemented than are messages
sent to suggest@sas.com.  Still, messages to suggest@sas.com are useful in
articulating desired improvements to be placed on the SASware Ballot.  I
also recognize that since EE is part of base SAS, there is not a
significant financial incentive for SAS to put R&D funds into enhancing EE.

As an aside, I'm using Notepad++, an open source editor, to edit programs
and review my SAS logs.  Since my benevolent employer has provided two
computers and two displays, I can open up separate instances of Notepad++
and see my code and the log side-by-side [a handy feature for those whose
short-term memory may be challenged <smile>].  I submit SAS code either in
batch or through opening the edited code in EE/DM.

In the near future, I plan to share how I customized Notepad++ to highlight
keywords for .sas and .logs files so that others can use the customization
file and perhaps enhance it.

- Michael


At 07:57 AM 2/17/2008 -0500, "Richard A. DeVenezia"
<rdevenezia@WILDBLUE.NET> wrote:
>Arthur Tabachneck wrote:
> > In case any birdies are listening, I would like to see SAS
> > incorporate a search mechanism within the list of
> > macros/abbreviations.  Since one can also store a description, as
> > well as the desired abbreviation, such a search capability could end
> > up being quite powerful.
>
>What we really need is a data/session aware intellisense.  Intellisense for
>the language completion aids and data aware for suggesting table name,
>variable name and other meta-context completion.
>
>In a 2007 fall users group conference, at the Futures Forum, I asked what
>was the prospect of beefing up the Enhanced Editor (EE)with these sorts of
>features.  The muted reply was that there were little or no plans on
>updating EE.  I was pretty shocked to hear such a statement. As customers
>you can tell SAS your desires (suggest@sas.com) or disgust (walking away).
>
>
>Richard A. DeVenezia
>http://www.devenezia.com/

Michael L. Davis
Ambler  PA
michael.davis@alumni.duke.edu