Alright, if it only affects rendering, then it should not be a big deal to make a preference for it. :-)


> Tabbed comments are similar to  traditional type-setting’s margin notes, that can be used to write table-like data, etc.


That's indeed an interesting use case for that I would like elastic tabstops, too! And here is another one: PasteUpMorph >> #defaultDesktopCommandKeyTriplets ... I would only dislike to indent blocks in this style. :-)


> My point being that Smalltalk source code is not plain text. Never has been. It shouldn’t be treated as such. IMHO.

Well, my perspective on this question is that Smalltalk is literally small talk without all this nasty and complicated syntactic stuff you are used to from C-like languages and many others. So it's still not exactly plain text, but at least very near to it. You can just read (good) Smalltalk code like a book (and I have to say that I *love* this book :D). That's why in my personal opinion, Smalltalk code does not deserve a separate font compared to comments. :-)

Best,
Christoph

________________________________
Von: Squeak-dev <squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org> im Auftrag von Vanessa Freudenberg <vanessa at codefrau.net>
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 7. April 2021 18:22:16
An: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Betreff: Re: [squeak-dev] Elastic Tabstops (was Re: Need better default code font)

Guess you misunderstood - this does not affect indentation at all, it only affects the rendering of tabs following non-space characters in a line. And indeed there could be a preference to render those tabs as a space instead, however, that would probably lead to those text blocks being messed up accidentally.

The Smalltalk environment was meant to provide rich text rendering. We had text that could flow around objects at some point, that could flow along a curve, that could embed bitmaps and even arbitrary morphs. For some reason we went back to more or less plain text at least for code. I partly blame Monticello which did not preserve the rich formatting that the style chunks in the fileout format supported. I do find that unfortunate, however, and would love to get some richness back.

Tabbed comments are similar to  traditional type-setting’s margin notes, that can be used to write table-like data, etc. You don’t have to use them, but I’m convinced it would make our codebase look a lot better.

Similarly, there’s no need for double quotes around comments. Comments should simply use a different font. Not coincidentally, that is exactly how commented code used to be printed in books. We only need the quotes for typing, and maybe for exporting, but otherwise I wouldn’t mind to never see them again.

My point being that Smalltalk source code is not plain text. Never has been. It shouldn’t be treated as such. IMHO.

Vanessa

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 08:31 Thiede, Christoph <Christoph.Thiede at student.hpi.uni-potsdam.de<mailto:Christoph.Thiede at student.hpi.uni-potsdam.de>> wrote:

> I would 💜 love 💜 if we had elastic tabstops by default in our code editors.

-1 for making this default behavior. :-) I think this is a matter of taste, but personally, I am not a friend of code that is not strictly left-justified, it just feels like wasted space to me.
Please let's make it an optional preference.

Best,
Christoph

________________________________
Von: Squeak-dev <squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org<mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org>> im Auftrag von Tobias Pape <Das.Linux at gmx.de<mailto:Das.Linux at gmx.de>>
Gesendet: Montag, 5. April 2021 22:39:10
An: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Betreff: Re: [squeak-dev] Elastic Tabstops (was Re: Need better default code font)



> On 5. Apr 2021, at 22:37, Vanessa Freudenberg <vanessa at codefrau.net<mailto:vanessa at codefrau.net>> wrote:
>
> Since we're on the subject of how our code looks:
> I would 💜 love 💜 if we had elastic tabstops by default in our code editors.
> This would eliminate (IMHO) the biggest counter-argument to using proportional fonts.
>

+100
-t
>
>
> Vanessa
>
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 12:55 PM Vanessa Freudenberg <vanessa at codefrau.net<mailto:vanessa at codefrau.net>> wrote:
> I just fixed a typo that went unnoticed for ~9 years (see KernelTests-codefrau.395). Even when Levente revised the code in 2015, he did not spot it:
>
> <image.png>
>
> IMHO (speaking as a typo nerd) this is due to our default code font not having distinct enough letter shapes. I very much like our use of a proportional font, but maybe it's time to switch to a different one?
>
> - Vanessa -
>
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 12:06 PM <commits at source.squeak.org<mailto:commits at source.squeak.org>> wrote:
> Vanessa Freudenberg uploaded a new version of KernelTests to project The Trunk:
> http://source.squeak.org/trunk/KernelTests-codefrau.395.mcz
>
> ==================== Summary ====================
>
> Name: KernelTests-codefrau.395
> Author: codefrau
> Time: 3 April 2021, 12:06:03.17026 pm
> UUID: 062e8b73-a62e-46ce-af80-0dbb34c2f8dc
> Ancestors: KernelTests-mt.394
>
> Fix typo in CompiledMethodComparisonTest.
>
> =============== Diff against KernelTests-mt.394 ===============
>
> Item was changed:
>   ----- Method: CompiledMethodComparisonTest>>testHash (in category 'tests') -----
>   testHash
>         <timeout: 120>
>
>         | ai |
>         ai := CompiledMethod allInstances.
>         "We assume here that if two CompiledMethods are equal then they have the same size and header."
>         (ai groupBy: [ :method | { method size. method header } ]) values
>                 replace: [ :each | each asArray ];
>                 do: [ :methods |
>                         1 to: methods size do: [ :i |
>                                 i to: methods size do: [ :j |
>                                         (methods at: i) = (methods at: j) ifTrue: [
> +                                               self assert: (methods at: i) hash equals: (methods at: j) hash ] ] ] ]
> -                                               self assert: (methods at: i) hash equals: (methods at: i) hash ] ] ] ]
>                 displayingProgress: 'Testing hashes'.
>         self assert: (ai collect: [ :cm | cm hash ] as: Set) size * 2 >= ai asSet size!
>
>
>




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