Improving DrRacket ergonomics

xerz · March 22, 2026, 3:28pm

Heya there! So I've been casually looking at the Racket ecosystem for a year or so, and due to recent circumstances I'm now planning to do HtDP, just so I can tick it off from my todo list and see if there's something I can learn from it. That means that I'm gonna have to do some DrRacket, for better or worse.

So far, I've written a bit of Racket and Rhombus code on my own, and I noticed the editor is a bit stuck in the 2000s. Here's the first few things I have observed:

Can't wrap text blocks in parentheses. In e.g. VSCode or GNOME Text Editor, you can select a block of text, then type (, and parentheses are inserted at the ends of the selection. Instead, the code gets replaced entirely.
Can't move code lines. Nowadays it is common to have Alt-{↑,↓} as keybindings for moving lines up and down. There's seemingly no such option nor equivalent on DrRacket, only cut and paste.
No multiple cursors. Just. Multiple cursors. Please.

Are there any DrRacket plugins that address these issues? Maybe some other interesting ones*? Thanks in advance!

*so far I only got drracket-cmdline-args

P.S.: off-topic, but the Spanish government and LaLiga are currently censoring the Racket websites. Again. Is there any odds we can get something that doesn't rely on Cloudflare, perhaps there's other Spaniards around who'd like to meet up and complain?

soegaard · March 22, 2026, 6:34pm

The Alt-{↑,↓} for moving lines would nice to have as default.

I think, the two first suggestions can be implemented with QuickScript.

There are examples of QuickScripts in QuickScript Extra:

There is more than I remembered!

It sounds as if this one [1]:

sections: Surrounds the selected text by comments ASCII frames

Could be modified to fit your wrap in parens bullet.

The multiple cursors idea probably need a helping hand from Robby.

[1]

github.com/Metaxal/quickscript-extra

scripts/sections.rkt

master

#lang racket/base
(require srfi/13
         (only-in racket/gui/base get-text-from-user)
         quickscript)

(script-help-string "Surrounds the selected text by comments ASCII frames.")
;;; Asks for input if nothing is selected.

(define (surround-char str char [prefix ""] [suffix (string-reverse prefix)])
  (let ([line (string-append prefix (build-string (+ 4 (string-length str)) (λ (i)  char)) suffix "\n")])
    (string-append 
     line
     prefix (string char) " " str " " (string char) suffix "\n"
     line)))

(define (string-or-from-user section str)
  (if (string=? str "")
      (get-text-from-user section (string-append "Enter a " section ":"))
      str))

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Improving DrRacket ergonomics

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