On 26-Sep-06, at 12:45 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:

>
> On 26.09.2006, at 01:22, tim Rowledge wrote:
>
>> Well I've just downloaded this and I'm very disappointed. I  
>> appreciate how much work is involved and how many sleepless nights  
>> it must have caused Marcus and Stef but....
>
> If those things are the one you find to be very disappointed, I  
> take it as a compliment: The changes in 3.9 are so huge that I,  
> honestly, am happy if these
> are the problems you find!

Exactly; that's how you *should* see it. You've done huge amounts of  
work and deserve the firm pat on the back that I would love to give  
you. I've done this same job many times and I know how painful it is.

>
>> This simply isn't an image to release to the general public. The  
>> two Workspaces need to be edited and de-typo'd.
>>
>
> Please do.

I'll give it a go as soon as I can make time.

>
>> There are now two prefer
>> ences tools, neither of which handle font settings or display  
>> setings. If one is going to replace an old tool with a new one it  
>> ought to noticeably improve upon it. And, of course, actually  
>> *replace* it.
>
> Please submit a patch. I once looked for some time into removing  
> the old Preferences. Sadly the code is so bad that even removing it  
> is *a lot* of work. The new
> preferences are an improvement on the old ones, so I fail to see  
> why we should not have added them. Isn't this the old Squeak  
> pattern of "doing nothing because
> something more perfect is thinkable" at work?

It can end up seeming that way. We could at least remove user  
confusion by simply removing the old preferences tool from easy  
access and thereby make it seem to disappear.

>
> The new Preferences e.g. integrate the HTTP-Proxy preference. That  
> alone makes them worth *a lot*. No code to be executed for proxy  
> settings...

Good indeed. So I claim that it is worth thinking very hard about  
trying to make the new tool more complete before final release; we  
could surely remove a lot of new and recently-new user confusion by  
having all the settings available in a single place.

>
>> Why is a package of omnibrowser included but not, so far as I can  
>> tell, hooked up to use? Not to mention it appears to be non- 
>> functional; on my machine (a very fast dualcore mac) I opened an  
>> OBSystemBrowser with #openOnClass: Object, pressed the 'hierarchy'  
>> button and got bored after more than a minute of waiting for a new  
>> browser.
>>
>
> It is not default because it's new. If people start to use it more,  
> fix bugs, integrate it a bit more, then we can remove the old one.  
> Don't you think you would be more
> pissed if there would only be OB then the state now? People do use  
> OmniBrowser, though. The way to do it is to set it as the Default  
> Browser (see window
> menu of the Browser. I works quite well, but OB needs to be used a  
> lot more before we can remove the old Browser.

OK; introducing a new browser system is all very well but if I had  
been able to take much part recently I would have suggested that it  
ought to have been kept as a package until it is at least close to  
being a good replacement. If it *is* to be included it really ought  
to be easy enough to access that there is a good chance of people  
trying it out. Buried in a menu that I bet a substantial fraction of  
people don't ever look at, named 'OBSystemBrowserAdaptor' is not  
going to attract a lot of testers.


>
>> What are
>> 	Morphic-Models
>> 	39Deprecated
>> 	FlexibleVocabularies-Info
>
> This is a package from Connectors that was a pre-requisit for  
> adding the squeakland changesets. I did once take the time to  
> rename all categories
> (as this package makes no sense, it's a patch that Ned managed as  
> an mcz package). But at some point it crept back in (I think the  
> Morpic Teams
> big first "make morphic to packages" changes, or even maybe one of  
> the >150 SqueakLand changesets).
>
> Someone should have re-invested the time to move all methods from  
> this package into the morphic packages. I didn't, you did not. So  
> is it my fault?

No, it's our collective fault combined with the depressing reality of  
time pressure. But explanations don't alter the facts (unless you're  
a member of some religion or other) and we have to try to work with  
the facts as much as possible.

>
> Morphic-Models is an auto-generated category by some strange code  
> that should be removed.

In the image I'm looking at, the category 'Morphic-Models' includes a  
single class that has no methods at all, which makes me think that it  
ought not exist. It does however have a single instance (a  
MorphicModle1(2710) which is pointed to by a PasteUpMorph(1622) which  
seems to claim to be the world. This seems like some nasty crap left  
over from ancient times, maybe?
>
> 39Deprecated contains all methods that where deprecated in 3.9a,  
> it's supposed to be there in 3.9 and removed in 3.10a

Sigh, yes, we still have that horrible class. Oh well.
>
>
>> 	ScriptLoader
>
> Scriptloader contains the machinary to update from the repository.  
> This was how it was done in 3.9, for 3.10, I think people will
> again have a look at the tools that Bert did at Impara and retire  
> Scriptloader. So why should this be  removed from 3.9?

What I forgot was to point out that at least partly it is the  
category names that cause potential confusion. Nit-picking I suppose  
but I'd suggest at least renaming to 'System-ScriptLoader', 'System- 
DeprecatedIn39' (and probably move the class MorphicModel1 into it),  
'Tools-PreferenceBuilder', 'Tools-ReleaseBuilder', 'PackageInfo- 
FlexibleVocabularies' etc.

Well, that was fun; I just went through to make a changeset for you  
with those category changes and the changeset is empty. How nice,  
work lost. I'll try again and see if does it again....


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
There can never be a computer language in which you cannot write a  
bad program.