[squeak-dev] The Trunk: Morphic-mt.1770.mcz

Marcel Taeumel marcel.taeumel at hpi.de
Fri Jun 11 07:17:05 UTC 2021


Hi Stéphane.

> Why is an ObjectExplorer telling you all these things about 3 and
> nothing at all about 'three'?

I have no clue. :-) I am in favor of configuring the ObjectExplorer in a more consistent way, maybe through a preference.

One could as well interpret an integer as a character and vice versa.

'three'
  |-- $t
    |-- 116
      |-- hex : '74'
      |-- oct ...
      |-- ...
  |-- $h
  |-- $r
  |-- $e

  |-- $e


But this would never stop because '74' is a string again. :-D

Expanding 'three' to its elements is also kind of different form showing various representations for integers. Hmm... a simple step forward could be:

[  ] Show string elements in object explorer
[x] Show integer representations in object explorer 
[  ] Show character representations in object explorer

The [x][  ] mark the default preference value.

Best,
Marcel
Am 11.06.2021 08:32:59 schrieb Stéphane Rollandin <lecteur at zogotounga.net>:
> Updates representation of integers in ObjectExplorer. For a small discussion, see http://forum.world.st/The-Trunk-Morphic-mt-1769-mcz-tp5129501p5129804.html

I'm a bit late to the party, but may I suggest to make the whole integer
representation in ObjectExplorer a preference?

Rationale: when peeking at an ObjectExplorer tree, one gets a first idea
of the structure of an object. Having a subtree for each Integer gives
the wrong feeling, that there is some extra structure there, while it is
only some extra information about the same very simple object.

So there is an obfuscation inherent to having the explorer represent in
the very same way two different categories of information: one about
structure, and one about representation.

This goes for strings too, although in the opposite way: if you explore
'abc', you will not get any information on $a, $b or $c from there (like
their ASCII code, for example) - this times the explorer hides structure.

I am not sure about my suggestion for a preference, so let me restate
the problem as I see it as follows:

Why is an ObjectExplorer telling you all these things about 3 and
nothing at all about 'three'?


Stef

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