[ENH] SMLoader search pane

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at netvision.net.il
Tue Jun 17 16:43:42 UTC 2003


[extra pane for installed packages]
Sounds like an excellent solution - whats the problem? seriously,
currently SM Loader doesn't help you do anything interesting for
installed packages (as far as I know). Are you interested in just seeing
them? Whether it is worth including depends on whether it serves
something lots of people care about.

[use indicators in package list]
For exactly this kind of thing, I think it's really improtant that we
seriously consider functional improvements to common widgets for
inclusion in the image. There is an extension for colored PLMs on SM,
and another for keyboard control of hierarchy lists (the latter I've
nominated for inclusion) but it seems this is much less important to
people than pure Look enhancements, which I find quite curious.

[not finding categorical loader]
Use the Search! :-) Last time I looked, it was
not-quite-ready-for-prime-time, IMO. I've stated before that SMLoader is
optimized for very-different-than-current conditions, and when something
superior appears, it should be replaced. But if we deny the alternatives
feedback, SMLoader will never be replaced...

Daniel

Doug Way <dway at riskmetrics.com> wrote:
> 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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