"Doug Way" <doug.way at riskmetrics.com> wrote:
> I would like to add Whisker as an alternate UI to the RB at some
> point... I may try to work on that at OOPSLA since there will likely be
> RB-knowledgeable people there.  
Great, I think Whisker is cool, and could be a very good match for the
RB, because it can lower the cost of small methods. For example, Extract
Method could show the code for both methods, new and modified. I won't
be at OOPSLA, but I'd love to help/collaborate. Contact me offline if
you wish.

> (With the Navigator, are you saying that
> you are going to leave it out for now because Browser handles its duties
> and to keep things simple, but that you'd probably need to have
> Navigator to support multiple UI's including Whisker?)
I'm leaving it outside for now because I can. In this particular point
in time it's part of the problem, not part of the solution...

What we have now in the system Browser and the RB subclass is a very
simple design thats been loaded over time beyond it's comfortable scale
- 

RefactoringBrowser selectors size => 167
Browser selectors size => 174

These two do lots and lots of work.

The Navigators, CodeTools (and Environments though for them it's only
part of what they're used for) comprise a beautiful design solution for
splitting the responsibilities of something that looks and acts more or
less like a regular Smalltalk browser, with refactorings.

IIRC, Navigator was not designed to support the Whisker model. 

In short, we definitely need something different, but I'm not sure the
existing Navigator are it. CodeTools or something like them are probably
part of it. I have some more ideas, but they're foggy, so I'm not acting
on them yet. I'll probably write something up in the next few days (the
holiday season is starting here). 

> Also, I am on the fixes review group, but mostly we're currently working
> on streamlining the incorporation of smaller fixes and enhancements.
> The RB is a pretty big item, which would probably be mostly up to SqC to
> decide to incorporate.  (The fixes review group may eventually expand
> its duties to look at larger items, I don't know.  Also, the notion of
> the "base image" will probably change a bit once a modularity system is
> in place.)
You're the maintainers of the first module - currently a very big one. 

I think in time, some people will be maintaining modules, and what the
community will need is some people maintaining a Configuration of
*module versions* that work together well.

The only thing that bothers me right now about the RB not being in the
image is that most people won't see it by default. What's required now
in this department is probably some cheating... :-)

For now I'm just trying to push upstream all the changes that I think
should not live in the RB module. 

> - Doug Way
>   dway at riskmetrics.com

Daniel