On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, ducasse wrote:

> I have the impression that we are several interested to have a parser and
> visitor that we could use for multiple usage: analysis, pretty printing,...

You're impression seems correct.

> It might be an occasion to create a separate project (this way we can work
> at our speed and get to the point the result can be included in the image)
> for a parser and AST/Visitor for Squeak with set of tests and documented
> code and examples.

That sounds interesting.

> Who could put time on that over some months?

I'd be willing to help out with some of the pretty printing stuff,
including alt syntax and colorizing. I'd surely port my "browse as
HTML" stuff (discussed in a forthcoming Squeak Tweaks column). Indeed, I'd
love to extend that to HTMLize bytecodes, etc. This could be then hooked
up to an update of Bert's SqueakBrowser swiki.

(This would be a good opportunity to nail down the diffing and display
code, which, while reasonable, is in need a slight refactoring, as there's
a lot of cut-n-paste reuse -- I discuss this too in the column.)

FWIW, I'd *love* to see a varient of the SqueakBrowser used for bug
tracking/harvesting management. If a super up-to-date image were driving
the browser, one could check it to see if a bug had already been
fixed/noted, etc.

(I can see this working inside squeak too. A "check for updated to this
method" could query a "main image" across the net and see if it has been
altered...I must not be the only one who's fixed/worked on a bug that was
fixed in an updated image! This might also smooth release fixes vs. test
pilot fixes...)

Parser/scanner is great testbed for major componant replacement and
coordinating distributed development thereof.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.