An Ideal System Browser

Bijan Parsia bparsia at email.unc.edu
Thu Nov 29 23:29:00 UTC 2001


On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Jerry Balzano wrote:

> Not that I'd presume to know what that is at my stage of (Squeak)
> development, but it occurred to me as I was browsing around through various
> classes and instances and methods that the Squeak System Browser lacks a
> feature that we take for granted on all our web browsers and that most of
> us would be lost without -- a "back" button!  Is it possible that nobody
> has found the need for such a function?

Well, there are some such features for certain things. E.g., "recent
classes" in the class pane.

>  'Cause I'd be looking at a method
> and I'd find a word I didn't understand or some such, or just say "I wonder
> about" some other class, method, or whatnot, and go there, then say to
> myself, "OK, that's great, (or "that's complicated" or whatever) now I'm
> ready to resume what I was doing." 

You might find the whisker browser more congenial for this sort of thign.

> But if what I was doing was in some
> totally separate class with lots of methods to paw (OK, scroll) through,
> well you get the idea -- what a pain!  and how wasteful of my time and
> energy.

find implementers and find senders (ctrl-m and ctrl n) are your
friends! And they open new windows.
 
> Now I know that I can just keep on opening a new SB whenever I begin one of
> these side trips, but my screen is already pretty full, and more than two
> System Browsers open at once is too many IMHO.  In most cases, all I really
> need is one open SB window, but with some kind of "history" mechanism, even
> if this is just a "back" button.

For class browsering shift-ctrl-b will keep you in the same window, and
that is handy, but you're correct, not has handy as with a way to reverse
it.

> What do people think?  Is this kind of thing already available somewhere,
> and I just missed it?  Or is there a better way of working such that
> working that way obviates the need I'm feeling here?

I don't think that it's an unreasonable way to work. It's just never been
enough of a problem for me (especially when I'm using this which don't
really display well in a SystemBrowser).

Whisker really rules the day, however, when you're comparing methods or
just peeking at one to get a sense of it in context. I don't *think* it
has a history mechanism.

Ooo, another "history" type thing that people use is the debugger. Of
course that's *send* and *receive* history, but that's often what you
want for picking apart some code. If you are jumping to different classes
trying to figure out what how a method works by "tracing" it in your head,
fire up the debugger, which has the advantage that you're working with
*live* code, rather than your in head simulation thereof :)

That being said, having a browse history would be interesting (but there
are complexities...do you want to browse *every* change to the code
pane? Only past methods? actually, the "every" change seems most rational,
with "recent categories", "recent classes", etc. being filtered
subsets; maybe).

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.





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