
Ask HN: Why not programming language annotations to induce editor/IDE features? - amichail
Why don&#x27;t programming languages contain standardized editor&#x2F;IDE annotations to induce more sophisticated editor&#x2F;IDE support (e.g., optional WYSIWYG table entry for tabular static data, etc.)?<p>For example:<p>let table:[[Int]] &#x2F;{ tabular, 10x10, centered } = ...<p>Editors&#x2F;IDEs supporting this annotation would give you a WYSIWYG table for entering and showing static data for this table.<p>Another example: induce editor&#x2F;IDE visualization via unicode<p>enum Suit { case Heart&#x2F;{unicode char}, Diamond&#x2F;{unicode char}, Spade&#x2F;︎{unicode char}, Club&#x2F;︎{unicode char} }<p>let x = Suit.Heart<p>In an IDE&#x2F;editor that supports visualization annotations, the following would be shown:<p>enum Suit { case Heart&#x2F;{unicode char}, Diamond&#x2F;{unicode char}, Spade&#x2F;︎{unicode char}, Club&#x2F;︎{unicode char} }<p>let x = Suit.{unicode char}<p>A linear algebra library might come with unicode visualizations to make code that uses it much nicer to look at.<p>Yet another example would be to induce tool support for &quot;commit comments&quot;:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;thebearjew&#x2F;commit-comments
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sklogic
See Wolfram Mathematica notebooks for example. Also, some literate programming
tools are somewhat close.

