On 9/6/10, Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda@gmail.com wrote:

Hi All,

while all these cool new browsers are great I get on well with the

standard browser and my multi-window hack around it.

Interesting, What do you mean by multi-window hack, Eliot? --Hannes

But the multi-window

hack shows up one major weakness with the default Browser, and that is it's use of list indices (systemCategoryListIndex classListIndex messageCategoryListIndex messageListIndex). These should just be systemCategoryName, className, messageProtocol (categories are in System-Organization; classes have protocols) messageSelector. If this happened the indices the browser has into the system would never become obsolete as does happen for example when one adds a class to a category, invalidating any classListIndex values into the same category, or systemCategoryListIndexes as happens often when the SystemOrganization changes on loading a package. So if anyone is looking for a small useful project, someone who probably has RB chops, how about reimplementing Browser so that it is essentially unchanged except for the indexes being ripped out, buried and stomped on?

If someone did this I'd get round to using menu pragmas throughout and integrating the RB into the base Browser.

cheers Eliot

Am 06.09.2010 03:00, schrieb Eliot Miranda:

These should just be systemCategoryName, className, messageProtocol (categories are in System-Organization; classes have protocols) messageSelector. If this happened the indices the browser has into the system would never become obsolete as does happen for example when one adds a class to a category, invalidating any classListIndex values into the same category, or systemCategoryListIndexes as happens often when the SystemOrganization changes on loading a package.

+999

Using integer indices in the browser panes is very 80's... and it has bitten me more than once.

Cheers, Hans-Martin

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Frank Shearar frank.shearar@angband.za.orgwrote:

On 2010/09/06 02:00, Eliot Miranda wrote:

...

Hi All,

while all these cool new browsers are great I get on well with the

standard browser and my multi-window hack around it. But the multi-window hack shows up one major weakness with the default Browser, and that is it's use of list indices (systemCategoryListIndex classListIndex messageCategoryListIndex messageListIndex). These should just be systemCategoryName, className, messageProtocol (categories are in System-Organization; classes have protocols) messageSelector. If this happened the indices the browser has into the system would never become obsolete as does happen for example when one adds a class to a category, invalidating any classListIndex values into the same category, or systemCategoryListIndexes as happens often when the SystemOrganization changes on loading a package. So if anyone is looking for a small useful project, someone who probably has RB chops, how about reimplementing Browser so that it is essentially unchanged except for the indexes being ripped out, buried and stomped on?

Browser already has methods like #selectedSystemCategoryName. Do these methods do what you want? (Never mind that internally they use the dreaded indices.)

What I want is that internally the browser /not/ use indices, and instead use symbols for the selected category name, the selected class name, the selected method protocol name, and the selected selector. The reason is of course that the indices become stale very quickly when the system is changed, either in other browsers or when packages are loaded/unloaded etc.

Lots of places simply check the systemCategoryListIndex just to see if something's selected; obviously, it's easy to just replace "systemCategoryListIndex = 0" with "self selectedSystemCategoryName isNil"

Right.

By far the biggest hurdle to easily mucking around (apart from the fun of breaking essential infrastructure) is the serious lack of tests.

If someone did this I'd get round to using menu pragmas throughout and

...

integrating the RB into the base Browser.

That's a very tasty carrot you're dangling there.

I find that carrot delicious too :)

I've started slowly, carefully, weeding out the index stuff: for now, I've just started on some baby steps (Tools-fbs.300) towards a Grand Refactoring.

Cool! That's great to hear.

frank