Hi,
If you open the Objects tool from the World menu, you get some categories which cut across packages, classes and methods . These categories are not optimal or exhaustive, but they can help one zoom in on some wood. From Object tools,select a category of interest(Graphics is a good choice), drag out an object and bring up a halo and browse the class. Yes, you're back in the browser but at least with a little context. If you do this with a few objects in the category you'll notice similarites and differences. Now the Object Explorer can help - there's nothing like working with wood! One easy thing you can do to increase bandwidth while browsing is to open the World menu and select Appearances/Preferences then browsing. Select opeionalButtons. Now when you open a new browser, you'll get a row of buttons which get you more wood. Mouse over the inheritance button and pay attention to it's color. Hopefully all this helps some.
There is a deeper issue here which Americo has touched upon on the Croquet list and I'd be very interested in your take on his tutorials at: http://www.dmu.com/crb/
Other help is on the way.
Regards,
Laurence
On 4/29/06, Stephen Davies <stephen.l.davies@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I'm trying to get familiar with Squeak. I used Smalltalk/V way back,
have and read and understand the Smalltalk 80 book, so it's not
completely new to me....
But Squeak is so much bigger. I'm really struggling to get an overall
sense of the beast - I can't see the wood for the trees and for me, at
least, the environment seems to contribute to that because of the
method-by-method interface to the code seems to make it harder to get
the big picture. Methods are presented in alphabetical order, without
much clue as to how they relate. Similarly for classes.
Are there any pointers/suggestions? I feel like I'm missing some tool
I don't know about. It's great that you can see everything, but
understanding for me would be aided with some sort of "gradual
revelation"; a way to replace all the details of a class or bunch of
classes with conceptual documentation - showing in a screen or two the
overall story of that class's purpose and place in the system. And a
way to dip under that to the implementation as needed.
Any comments or suggestions for me?
Thanks,
Steve Davies