A roadmap for 3.9
Tim Rowledge
tim at sumeru.stanford.edu
Sun Dec 12 18:57:06 UTC 2004
Hannes Hirzel <hirzel at spw.unizh.ch> wrote:
> B. Better usability on a UI level
> ----------------------------------
>
> A Better usability on a UI level means
>
> - Diegos new menubar at the top (and other UI changes)
Absolutely not. I admire Diego's work enormously but a menubar is not an
improvement in UI usability.
> - Shout (Syntax highlighting)
Not if it costs any cycles. Smalltalk syntax is so simple I cannot
believe anyone really benefits from such a thing and if it slows down
an already appallingly slow text widget it will prevent me from doing
anything at all in Squeak. Which would mean no more VMMaker.
> - eCompletion (Proposal of method signatures as you type - like Eclipse)
Ditto. Don't get in my way.
IF and only if you can incorporate such things with absolutely no
performance impact, do it with a preference, or make subclasses of the
text widget(s) and make using them a preference.
> Better usability on a system/developer level means
> - Anthonys compiler in addition -> the default is still the current one.
> (helps users working with Smalltalk as the language because it has
> a clean and adaptabel parse tree structure - for example one
> could use Squeak as an MDA modeling language and generate code
> for various platforms)
I disagree. Either replace the compiler or not. Adding another will
lead to confusion, chaos, spots and blindness.
> - SystemDictionary changes (see note below)
> - Monticello ( an alternative to change sets, it gives
> a better view at the packages and gives more
> options for co-developing code)
Probably a good idea. It is quite small, quite good and probably
somethnig people should be encouraged to use. Needs work in some areas
of course.
> C. Concerns
> -----------
>
> Concerns are that the rate of change is too high and that the system
> gets unstable and unreliable or that the effort of keeping the old
> packages in line with the new versions is difficult.
My concern here is that the rate of inadequately _documented_ change is
too high. You can cope with changes if you know what they are, what
they were done for, where and the real intent.
tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- A deadbolt with a broken cylinder.
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