<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 12:03 PM, Frank Shearar <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:frank.shearar@gmail.com" target="_blank">frank.shearar@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">OK, so that's you & I in agreement. I think Colin's happy for it to</span><br>
</div></div>
go. Any ol' timers out there with warnings of doom, before I rip this<br>
out?</blockquote><div><br></div><div>No, I certainly wouldn't miss it. </div><div><br></div><div>I will say this, however. I don't know if it goes all the way back to ST-80, but I do remember that styled code was considered important in the early days of Squeak. I seem to remember some tweaks to Monticello when it first came out that would allow it to store styled code the same way it's stored in the changes file. IIRC we even supported hyperlinks in code, although I don't remember actually seeing one in the wild. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Therefore, we ought to decide if this is a change in policy—i.e., we're going to support plain-text source code only—or if we're just rejiggering preferences for better modularity. If it's a policy change, we have a free hand simplify the codebase accordingly, take styling commands out of code editors and so on. It doesn't have to be done right away, but let's consider that on the agenda for 4.6. </div>
<div><br></div><div>On the other hand, if we consider styled source code important, we should figure out how to change the preferences to play nicely with Shout for those who use it, while still retaining the ability to manually style code and persist those styles along with the content of the code.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Personally, I'd vote for plain-text only code. I can see the value of styled code, but that's not the way the world went, and it's no longer worth the complexity or friction when dealing with the world outside of the image. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Colin</div></div></div></div>