table-editor

Some code structures are similar to tables, others to human text, others to something else. We could make use of this with a structural text editor, that represents source files and whatever else as some objects - tables, graphs, etc..

A buffer is separated into typed blocks, which define the way they are rendered into text. Those blocks aren't tied down to a programming language or some style - former may be different in a single buffer, later is set environmentaly or on per-block basis.

This frees us from formatting hurdles, since rendering is handled by the editor and can be arbitrary.

In general such blocks allow working on more meaningful elements of a file than pure text can easily represent. For example, blocks can expand to functions, classes, interfaces - then a file can be shown as a graph, rather than a weird blob of text. This also makes working with CVS, JSON or HTML - i.e. structured data, - nicer.

Since blocks can reference each other and relate in arbitrary ways, this format can abstract over code organisation techniques, used in various languages. E.g. nix flakes intorduce extremely nested expressions, which can be made nicer with better organisation.

Thus we achieve programmable representation. User may choose to see source as a tree of nodes or a descending text.

Such editor would require a GUI, rendering buffers as sets of graphical elements.

The editor should probably be a runtime for some language, since the amount of technical details required for such work is hard to express without a DSL.