Ramon Leon <ramonleon at cox.net> writes:
> > Modulo the quality of the comments in the code that are being used,
> > it's the presentation that can make the difference. A form of
> > browser  that can gather linked comments from methods and classes
> > and present  them in a neatly intelligible form is surely an
> > improvement over  scattered snippets?
> 
> Is not the standard Smalltalk browser such a browser?  How would some
> other browser, using the same data, be able to somehow present the
> information better than the Smalltalk browser?  If such a great
> feature existed, wouldn't we simply add it to the existing Smalltalk
> browser?

It is, Ramon.  The Smalltalk browser, specialized to its task, is way
better than a generic web browser.  Furthermore, the Smalltalk browser
is *integrated*, meaning you can flip seamlessly between browsing,
executing, coding, and debugging.  The Squeak debugger can put you
into the Squeak browser, and the Squeak browser can execute things for
you (and IMHO it could profitably do more of that....)

Ruby and Java, having no such browser, must use a generic tool (HTML)
and their integration cannot be as nice.  Smalltalk is way ahead of
its time with its code browsing.


Incidentally, I would not be complacent -- there is always room to add
new or better browsing views to Squeak.  It would be worth looking
through the output from the various FooDoc programs and checking that
Squeak includes analogous views for all of them that matter.

Also, it is well worth looking at the hyper-linking within the
browser.  It would be better if the context menus of Squeak were
actually context-sensitive to what has been highlighted, so that you
can offer good browsing choices.  Instead of "inst var defs" and then
select the variable, it should be possible to highlight the variable
and then "defs of THIS inst var" is on the context menu.

To get ideas about this, just check out Eclipse....


-Lex