the "script manager" in Stable Squeak

Ned Konz ned at bike-nomad.com
Thu May 24 17:39:49 UTC 2001


On Thursday 24 May 2001 10:29, Stephen Pair wrote:
> Jon Hylands wrote:
> > I don't know... One of the central tenants of the way that text panes
> > in Smalltalk work is that DoIts are done in the context of what you're
> > looking at. Since a workspace really has no central object, nil works
> > well. In an inspector, the context is the object being inspected. In a
> > browser, the context is the class being browsed.
> >
> > If you had a UserWorkspace, then it might make sense to have it use
> > the current user as the context...
>
> Right...but, isn't that exactly what a workspace is...a "user workspace?"
> I'd even argue that the usage of "self" as the thing you are looking at is
> a misuse...would it make more sense to have a special variable called
> "theThingImLookingAt" (please don't take me literally).

How about this: imagine a Workspace where there is a pane at the top left 
that show a list of the workspace-local variable bindings by name. Selecting 
one of these variables shows a simple inspector in the top right pane. It 
also makes that variable the receiver for Doits.

You could also provide access to a global pool of variable bindings that are 
shared between Workspaces, selecting local or global variables with a button 
or checkbox.

It seems to me that I once used a Workspace like this in ControlWORKS (a 
VW-based system for machine control). It's been a while, so maybe I'm wrong, 
but does this seem like a good idea?

-- 
Ned Konz
currently: Stanwood, WA
email:     ned at bike-nomad.com
homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com





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