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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