Hi Avi,
A couple of months ago I sent to the list a little changeset that added an application registry for the SystemBrowser. The thread started the 08/05/2004 and had this subject: '[ENH] openBrowser-ls'. What did you think about those changes?
I think that better than making OB to change paragraph editor so it can hook on <cmd>-m, <cmd>-n and <cmd>-b. Why not we make an app-registry as the one I sent? In fact, why not we add this changeset to the unstable stream right now so we can start to fix the wrinkles that may appear?.
We are now at the start of alpha and that is a very valuable thing. I think that we should seize this opportunity to make all the unstabilizing changes that we will be afraid to make later. So lets do this.
Regards, Hernán
Avi Bryant wrote:
On Sep 11, 2004, at 12:54 AM, Colin Putney wrote:
On Sep 10, 2004, at 4:23 AM, danielv@tx.technion.ac.il wrote:
If you release (an alpha) in the next day, we can test it at CampSmalltalk and maybe help along.
Ok, this isn't quite a full release, as I haven't posted on SqueakMap and don't have time to figure out SAR packaging tonight, but here it is. You'll need Monticello loaded to run the tests.
Colin,
We loaded this here in Camp Smalltalk and took it for a drive. Updates didn't work at all, at first - we had to change "OBBrowser allInstancesDo:" to "OBBrowser allSubInstancesDo:". And the text pane doesn't seem to update at all without manually re-selecting the current method (which also means that it doesn't complain with the thick red line if you have concurrent edits in different browsers). Apart from that, it's been very solid, and seems to include all the menu items, d'n'd, and so on that I would expect - it now feels like a finished browser rather than a proof of concept.
One other complaint that came up is that the enabled/disabled status of the buttons isn't easy enough to tell at a glance. However, I think the new way they work was a good choice - having the button row constantly changing underfoot was disconcerting, and this makes the UI feel much more stable. For some reason the chasing browsers still discombobulate me a bit in that same way, but I'm not sure how to fix that, and it probably just takes getting used to.
It would also be great if the shortcut keys (alt-m, alt-n, alt-b, etc) could be (optionally?) modified to bring up the OB instead of the standard tools. Otherwise it's really hard to stay in OB for long. If that can be hacked in easily, I think I'll try adopting this as my main browser and see how I do.
So, great work, and I look forward to seeing it on SqueakMap.
Avi