[squeak-dev] The Trunk: Morphic-mt.1852.mcz

Jakob Reschke jakres+squeak at gmail.com
Wed Jan 26 07:28:24 UTC 2022


Hi,

Morning suggestion (beware...): when the user accepts the text for the
first time in a workspace window, ask them whether they want to save the
contents to a file or not *for this workspace*. The workspace instance will
remember the choice, so that it does not prompt again. A new workspace will
prompt when accepted for the first time.

The message can also elaborate a bit on the pros and cons and hint at the
preference since users will most likely only fully read it on the first
occurrence.

To reverse their choice later we could either allow users to bind or unbind
workspaces to/from a file via the menu, or teach them to open another
workspace, copy the text to it, accept and make a different choice.

What would you expect to happen if you clone the workspace window?

Kind regards,
Jakob

Marcel Taeumel <marcel.taeumel at hpi.de> schrieb am Mi., 26. Jan. 2022, 08:01:

> Hi Chris --
>
> > Workspaces are saved in the image. New users are trained to save
> their image very early on. [...] So it's actually already pretty hard to
> lose anything "important" [...]
>
> It would be helpful if you would address the issue that Workspaces look
> like the code-editing facilities in Browser/MessageSet/Debugger. There, you
> can hit CMD+S and do not have to care about the lifetime of that tool
> window. It's rather unrelated to the fact that you have to learn save the
> image. That kind of inconsistency between Workspaces and
> Browser/MessageSet/Debugger has been around for a very long time. It's
> about time we improve on it. ;-) I am pretty sure there were reasons back
> then in the old days, when message sends where expensive and file access
> was as well. Nowadays, that's not the case anymore. So we can -- and should
> -- focus on usability a little bit more. Make the system robust. Value the
> user's input and make sure that it does not get lost through little
> usability slips.
>
> Best,
> Marcel
>
> Am 26.01.2022 02:19:10 schrieb Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com>:
> (Tim)
> > > I've never noticed any confusion with the general case of Workspace
> and 'accept'; all it has ever done (we're talking around 40 years practice
> here) is save the content to a string as a backup.
> >
> > (Marcel)
> > What kind of intransparent, fragile "backup" would that be? You hit the
> window's close button and that "backup" is gone. In my opinion, that's not
> a "backup".
> >
> > (Jaromir)
> > So similarly I’d expect to find my last accepted Workspace changes
> somewhere - and I don’t know where - is this what I’m still missing? And
> quite logically then, if I crash my image...
>
> Workspaces are saved in the image. New users are trained to save
> their image very early on. Not only that, assuming they were taught
> that Workspaces are for playing with Smalltalk code, then they can
> find all their most recent DoIt's (et al) in the change history. Like
> any backup one could poke holes in, Workspaces are backed up
> well-enough relative to their use-cases.
>
> So it's actually already pretty hard to lose anything "important",
> unless they decided to put their Last Will and Testament into a
> workspace window and forgot to save the image... :)
>
> Humor aside, there's only so much protection we can try to layer on to
> guide users, but their curious exploration (hopefully!) will still
> always lead them to minor setbacks. Once learned, I doubt many will
> care for the system to constantly remind them. Unless Squeak can get
> "Ignore this message in the future" functionality, I predict these
> post pop-ups will eventually be removed from the code.
>
> Best,
> Chris
>
>
>
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