The author discusses the increasing interest in advanced text editing methods beyond traditional programming languages, such as structured editing. They highlight the benefits of structured editing, such as instant feedback and semantic-based feedback, but acknowledge the limitations that structured editors have in accommodating non-structural editing habits of programmers. The author introduces incremental parsing as a solution that allows for the advantages of structured editing while still allowing non-structured editing. They point to Tim Wagner’s thesis on incremental parsing as a practical basis for tooling and mention the influence of his work on real implementations like Tree-sitter. The author expresses hope for more progress in the field of structured editing and encourages those in the area to explore incremental parsing further.
https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2024/structured_editing_and_incremental_parsing.html