That sounds extremely nifty, Ned!

Joshua


On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 10:39:49AM -0700, Ned Konz wrote:
> On Thursday 24 May 2001 10:29, Stephen Pair wrote:
> > Jon Hylands wrote:
> > > I don't know... One of the central tenants of the way that text panes
> > > in Smalltalk work is that DoIts are done in the context of what you're
> > > looking at. Since a workspace really has no central object, nil works
> > > well. In an inspector, the context is the object being inspected. In a
> > > browser, the context is the class being browsed.
> > >
> > > If you had a UserWorkspace, then it might make sense to have it use
> > > the current user as the context...
> >
> > Right...but, isn't that exactly what a workspace is...a "user workspace?"
> > I'd even argue that the usage of "self" as the thing you are looking at is
> > a misuse...would it make more sense to have a special variable called
> > "theThingImLookingAt" (please don't take me literally).
> 
> How about this: imagine a Workspace where there is a pane at the top left 
> that show a list of the workspace-local variable bindings by name. Selecting 
> one of these variables shows a simple inspector in the top right pane. It 
> also makes that variable the receiver for Doits.
> 
> You could also provide access to a global pool of variable bindings that are 
> shared between Workspaces, selecting local or global variables with a button 
> or checkbox.
> 
> It seems to me that I once used a Workspace like this in ControlWORKS (a 
> VW-based system for machine control). It's been a while, so maybe I'm wrong, 
> but does this seem like a good idea?
> 
> -- 
> Ned Konz
> currently: Stanwood, WA
> email:     ned at bike-nomad.com
> homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com