graceful degradation in the case of errors

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi Claus,

> 1. when any source module has an error on load, Hugs stops in the middle
>     of that module, being entirely useless until I comment out the offending
>     lines, save and reload, or unload everything but the Prelude.

I find that annoying too, and generally keep a separate WinHugs copy
open at all times to do :t commands when things break. I thought this
might be a big architectural change, or I would have suggested it.


> 2. problem 1 is made worse because minhugs seems to do an implicit
>     load (at the next command) when the file changes on disc.

WinHugs always had this ability, but it was turned off by default. I
find this very useful, and while its annoying to some people, I find
that for beginners (esp those without loads of computer experience) if
you have this turned off then they get loads of issues with evaluating
code which is different to that which is saved. One term demonstrating
programming and watching people make this error will convince you this
should be the default of everything! Kent University even wrote their
own editor/interpreter so the students can't forget to save before
evaluating.

That said, its still just an option:
File / Options / Compile Time / Automatically Reload Modified Files

Thanks

Neil