On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 3:42 AM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22 June 2013 00:37, Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This would seem to change the capability that a browser can have the
>> same message in the list more than once.
>
> A Brower can't have the same message in the list more than once - that
> would imply a duplicate system category, or two classes with the same
> name within a message category, or...

No.  The usage of data (in this case, collections of methods) by a
browser is wholly independent of the Smalltalk code structure.
Consider an example where we're already close to needing "duplicate"
messages in a list -- the "Recent Submissions" browser.  The way it
behaves today, you're correct, it doesn't have "duplicates" but it's
quite feasible one little tweak could be desirable that would always
show "the actual log record" of changed methods by the developer, such
that, even when a method is changed twice, it appears in the list
twice at the positions in which it was changed.  This might be useful
for understanding what methods are "causing trouble that day".

>> Is this to support some functionality?  Or just a "clean up"?
>
> It's cleanup because I made Browser use Symbols instead of indices a
> year or two ago. The use case was that Browsers would lose your place
> when things happened, because an integer index has no semantic
> meaning. Inserting a new item into the list, or removing same, caused
> the Browser to behave oddly.

Ok, my only point is, sometimes we do cleanups without discussing the
possible implications very much.  I don't have any concrete objections
to this specific clean-up, I just think it's good that we understand,
as a community, when a seemingly benign cleanup could potentially
affect functional capability of the system.