[squeak-dev] Re: Is there a preference setting to block automatic parentheses?

Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda at gmail.com
Tue Feb 24 18:19:04 UTC 2015


Hi Chris,

On Feb 24, 2015, at 9:23 AM, Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> If I am blindly typing
>>>   (foo)
>>> I expect to end up with
>>>   (foo)
>>> 
>>> In current Squeak I end up with
>>>   (foo))
>>> which is clearly wrong and extremely annoying and makes me hate the feature.
> 
> Okay, thanks for explaining that.  Sure, that's how eclipse works too.
> I figured that's what you meant, but I wasn't sure because wailing
> about that is almost harder than simply fixing it.   ;)
> 
> Try filing in the attached patch and see if it does what you want.  It
> simply checks the next non-whitespace character in front of the cursor
> and if its the same closer that was typed, simply advances the cursor
> rather than type the closing character.
> 
>>> ... snip ...
>>> which is so obviously right I'm not even sure how anyone could argue Squeak's is not horribly broken.
> 
> Eliot wrote:
>> +1.  Hate is not too strong a word.  Horribly broken is accurate.
> 
> Guys, I thought *I* was the emotional one.  If you reserve such strong
> words for things this small then you won't be able to differentiate
> from the bigger things.  I've been learning that such words are not
> always the most productive way to criticize and can can make others
> feel bad..  Lighten up people!  :)

:).  Maybe you're taking the reaction to the feature personally.  I don't hate you but yes, I /do/ hate the auto enclose because do often it does the wrong thing, causes me to to have to compensate with editing and therefore breaks my flow.  It is /so/ in my face.  I do hate it.

> 
>> Given that Smalltalk has had control-enclose for decades that is useful and predictable we don't need something poorly engineered.  Can we either get it right or get rid of it, please?
> 
> There is no chance this feature will be removed because it is one of
> several necessary components that make up a fantastic suite of
> expression-editing functions.  Some people operate by "editing text"
> and others by "editing expressions".  This feature is an absolutely
> essential component of a group of functions for the latter; along with
> Control+enclose, Expression-selection (via Command+[space]), and
> Paren-Blinking.  I've put quite a bit of thought into this..
> 
> Please check out the attached improvement, and I hope you can switch
> your hate to love...   :)
> 
>>> So, as others have pointed out, it's not that we don't want the editor to be helpful, it is a very useful feature, but it must be mindful of what the user wants.
>>> 
>>> - Bert -
> <TextEditor-dispatchOnKeyboardEvent.st.gz>
> 


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