[rosejn]

Great concept. This is kind of similar to an editor we've been talking about for Overtone. How about,

* allow for render plugin functions so values can be rendered with images, rendered canvases, control elements, etc.

* treat the AST as the primary data for each function or form, and then make the source code one of multiple renderings of the data.

- makes paredit type manipulations just operations on the ast

- allow for decorating the ast with additional data, which can be rendered with plugins (for example, heat-up regions of code as a profiler runs)

[alcapwned]

Perhaps you could make comments part of the ast decoration. Hover over a function call and the IDE can popup a display showing comments for that function. The popup could be easily switched back and forth between comments, the parameter list, or possibly other info about the function. The comments could be plain-text, rendered HTML, or even crazier stuff like audio/video recordings for particularly important comments.

People could choose whether they wanted comments rendered inline with code like usual or displayed elsewhere.