[Newbies] Method category tags

[Matthew Fulmer]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 06:09:49PM +0100, cdrick wrote:
> Hi
> 
> In a recent post, Matthew Fulmer explained how categories work... and
> I don't really see why they exist this way... Can someone explain me
> (historical reason, etc...)?
> 
> >"In Squeak, Classes are objects, methods are objects, but
> >categories are not. Categories are implemented interestingly.
> >See Categorizer and subclasses. Categorizer stores two lists of
> >Symbols; one is the list of all the categories, the other is the
> >list of all the class names or method names, arranged so that
> >all the names in the first part of the list are in the first
> >category, the next few methods are in category 2, and so forth.
> >So all the categories are is a symbol in a special list, with
> >the mapping to classes and methods is maintained by other
> >entities.
> >
> >How would changing this work? Mostly, Browser would have to be
> >changed significantly. OmniBrowser would probably be easier to
> >adapt, but I have only worked with Browser, so I cannot comment."
> 
> 
> I don't mind method categories are not first class but I find quite
> annoying and limited to use them (there is not even a list of usual
> categories except in the class side...).

Huh? when you say New Category..., you get a list with several
categories you might logically want:
- The most popular categories globally
- The most popular categories in the superclass
- Your most common category creation requests

> My wish is I'd like to define categories as tags so I can attach
> several to method. This could be interesting to declare private method
> and classes extensions...
> 
> Would it be possible and would you find useful to have that
> possibility ? Maybe we could use a pragma like syntax.
> 
> AClass>>aMethod
> <category: #private category: #accessing category: #toRefactor
> extension: myPackage trait: TPureBehavior>
> ....
> 
> Matthew also said we could adopt Namespace/Category like Gulik's work on
> namespaces, as Namespaces are much like reified Categories.
> 
> What do you think ? Am I the only one annoyed the way method
> categories works (maybe another newbie reflex and maybe I don't get
> the power of categories the way they are...).

Power? Heh. Categories are just to document the intended use of
the methods by association. I wouldn't want them to be in
syntax; that would make recategorizing slow. The usual way to
change the category of a method is by drag/drop, which beats
typing something comment-like.

Maybe tags could use the annotation pane above the text window.

I've never really seen a reason to associate a method with more
than two groups. Nonetheless, Categorizer could do that; just
have the same symbol in multiple categories. Harder, though,
would be correctly making a file-out or MC package with a new
assumption that categories work differently than they have.

-- 
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808