Back to the issue... (was RE: Squeak coding style...)

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Mon Mar 8 17:52:26 UTC 2004


"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
> I wrote:
> 	One obvious tool would be a comment collector.
> 	This would collect class comments from all the ancestral classes
> 	into one TextMorph, so that I could see all the relevant comments
> 
> "Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu> replied:
> 	Did you know that there are tools in Squeak already for these
> 	directions of exploration?
> 
> Yes, I did.
> 

Okay, just checking, so that I know which response to write.

The difference between the comment collector and the hierarchy browser
is subtle.  In one, you get a single text pane holding all the comments
which you can then scroll through with the regular text scroller.  In
the other, you get a list morph plus a text pane, and you can scroll
through the items of the list.  For Unix people, it is the difference
between "more < $MAIL" and "pine".

You might call this difference the amount of "flatness" in the browser. 
You are essentially proposing to have a flattened hierarchy browser (and
a flattened method inheritance browser, I presume, for method comments).
 This discussion has also gone around in the past regarding regular
system browsers: people have requested the possibility to flatten just
about every pane in the browser.

Personally, I tend to prefer more hierarchy rather than less, and not
just in Squeak.  When I work in Emacs on large files, I usually take the
time to set up outline mode so that I do not simply get the whole thing
dumped in my face.  I like being able to see just the portion of the
file I am working on without having to visually search.  The downside is
that you *only* see a limited amount of stuff at a time, and thus you
can end up clicking a little more to move around.

Incidentally, the "Whisker" browser sits at an intermediate point in
this spectrum.  Whisker lets you select multiple items in a single
browser and see all those items on the screen.

Anyway, you apparently lean towards the opposite end of the spectrum
from me.  You prefer to see more information at once, thus choosing the
evil of more irrelevant stuff instead of the evil of more required
navigation.  I hope you do eventually find time to work on your browser
ideas, because both ends of the spectrum are worth exploring.  Squeak is
mostly at the non-flat extreme right now.


-Lex



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