From Stefan Gower <gower@home.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 21:29:40 -0700

>
> JTB Questionnaire
> -----------------
>
> 1.  Please provide a short description of JTB as a recommendation to
>     someone who has never seen or used it before.
>

I have largely used JTB for aiding in source
code transformation (Java to Java). It has been helpful
in this effort. I haven't found it to be buggy or anything
like that. It has done what it said it would do.

The only problem I encountered with it was a bizarre
corner case where I had trouble running it under a
Symantec Cafe 2.0 debugger if the source code being
parsed lacked a carriage return at the end of the file.
This problem never showed up outside of the debugger
and, when carriage returns were added, it disappeared
from the debugger. Since this was the only problem
I had, and it is a pretty weird case at that, I think
that's pretty good.

This is only my second experience writing software involving
parsing etc. (I have hand-written a parser previously). Using
JTB things went fairly smoothly, though documentation
geared to less experienced users would have been helpful
here.

Although clearly documented as not supported, the class of comment
handling is a problem for me. I hope it will be added. Please.

> 2.  How would you classify your use of JTB?  What kind of work are you
>     doing or have you done using JTB?
>

I have used it to inspect and manipulate Java source code,
and also will use it to pretty print automatically generated
Java source code.

> 3.  What is your opinion on JTB?  Did you find the tool useful?  Please
>     rate it on a scale from 1 to 10 (worst to best).
>

I don't have much experience with a tool such as this.
I'd give it a 7 or an eight. I base this on the fact
that what it claimed to do, it did. I can't give
it higher marks because I simply lack the background
to make such a judgement.

> 4.  Have you used other similar tools such as JJTree or ANTLR (specifically,
>     the tree-building aspect of it)?
>

No

> 5.  If you answered yes to number 4, how would you compare JTB with
>     these other tools?  Again, please rate it from 1 to 10 in comparison and
>     include anything you have to say, including comments on ease of use,
>     learning curve, etc.
>


> 6.  Please include below any other comments you have regarding JTB.  Feel
>     free to include any suggestions for improvement.
>
>

Add support for comments in your pretty printing example.
(involving Java)

Add support for ASTs please! I found that I had to do a very
large amount of work in order to recognize Java programming
elements. Rather than see AST nodes corresponding to
Gosling & Steele's definition, I instead had to work
with a very low-level definition and, using quite a bit
of code, do considerable analysis to further distinguish
programming elements. Perhaps such support is beyond what
is feasible for such a tool as this. I don't know.
As a user, I can only wish that the semantic level of the
identified elements was at a higher level.