next unravel version will indicate unreadable forms (mismatched parentheses etc.) live and in red

not sure I like the red prompt as an indicator - any ideas about an unobtrusive signal to the user?

What can you do?

what do you mean?

can you add a character that’s always displayed after the cursor?

maybe not a good idea anyway

I can print anything, then reprompt

I can change the prompt

I can clear the screen below the prompt

I can move the cursor around

what about a glyph like 🚫

ah! a unicode character

an emoji sadly

ah got it

U+20E0

⃠

(but a combining caharacter so may print on top of the previous one when unicode moons align)

yeah I had the combining char problem

what about making it a trailing character?

usually my eyes are at the end of the form (notwithstanding heavy edits)

the problem with a trailing char is that I'll need to re-prompt for every keystroke I think

note sure how important it is to limit redraws

can you change the color of the caret/block cursor?

fwiw, I liked the red

@dominicm changing the prompt color is definitely the simplest option

super cool @pesterhazy, I also like the emoji, maybe you can substitute the => for a red 🚫

yeah exactly. I've seen actual colorful emojis in iterm2 so there must be a way to show those

be careful though, because emojis don't work well across most linux terms

Do you have the error info? Can you highlight the char that breaks? In paredit it is usually like that (where it can)...I know it is maybe more work 😀

Also the classic clue that is universally recognized is that it does not evaluate but goes newline waiting for a correct terminator...I am not saying it is the best, but it would be consistent with readline (I guess?)

Sorry not sure readline is the culprit there but I hope you got the idea

Right, yeah the change will not affect pressing return. But it will give you a visual clue that the form is incomplete even before pressing return

Highliting the location of the exception would be best, I agree