[ENH] SMLoader search pane

Doug Way dway at riskmetrics.com
Mon Jun 16 23:16:01 UTC 2003


Daniel Vainsencher wrote:

> The latest version of SM-Loader integrates this code - I got tired of
> the same exercise. It also disables by default the much-hated
> same-squeak-version-filter.


Sounds good!  There have been various other enhancements suggested for 
the SMLoader in the past... if I had to list just a few (that wouldn't 
bloat the UI too much), they would be:

- Add a separate pane for installed packages.  I like the simplicity of 
the SMLoader, but this is one UI element that would definitely be worth 
its weight IMHO.  The pane could be on the left side, underneath (or 
over) the uninstalled packages pane, and considerably shorter than that 
pane.  (You could handle this in other ways, such as showing installed 
packages in bold, italic, etc., but that seems clunkier.)

- Maybe have a less strict mechanism for letting people know that a 
package isn't listed as compatible with the current squeak version.  You 
could pop up a warning before the package is downloaded.  Or, 
non-compatible packages could be listed with a gray color, indicating a 
sort of disabled status.  (This may not be all that important, though... 
once we get to package dependencies, the importance of the 
version-compatibility field will fade.)

- Have an extra pop-up menu item to filter packages by other categories 
such as by license, by package type, etc.

Yeah yeah, enhancement submissions are preferred to suggestions. :-)  
Probably the only one I really care about is adding the extra pane for 
installed packages.  If I submitted an enhancement for that, would that 
be worth incorporating?

Also, I know that there are other package browsers out there, but the 
default one is going to get the most attention.  For example, I've 
already forgotten the name of the hierarchical one that was done awhile 
ago, and it's taking me a while to find it by browsing through the list 
of 200 or so packages...

- Doug Way




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