Readability knob

I Wish I Had a Readability Knob

I wish that I had an editor that allowed me to write:

(format nil “~a.~a” owner's name name)

and, when I hover the mouse over the highlighted variable, I get a slider or a rotary knob.

When the knob is set to 0, I get the above.

When the knob is turned to 5, I see:

(format nil “~a.~a” eh.name name)

When the knob is turned to 10, I see:

(format nil "~a.~a" (slot-value eh 'name) name)

When the knob is over-turned to 11, I get Assembler. If I keep going, I get de Bruijn indexing, I get Forth, I get lambda calculus, etc., etc.

Somewhere - well out of the way - I am allowed to define a table, like

phrase	synonym
owner’s name	eh.name
x.y	(slot-value ‘y x)

In the best of all worlds, setting up the table is done via some “easy” UX. E.g. highlight the phrase, get a popup to enter the synonym (uh, what UX is used for entering generic synonym transforms like “x.y”?)

Proof of Concept

Appendix - attribution

The picture of the knob: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dejankrsmanovic/29451540498/