Interesting. Two questions and a comment:
q1) Would it be hard to add something meta to the 'more' menu in the
Preference Browser that would clue a user in on where to start looking for a
way to programmatically interact with the value? I realize that, perhaps, by
the time one's doing that, one ought to know how to search with Cmd-Shift-E
(I didn't, heh ^.^) but I liked being able to look at a preference in the
browser and know right away how to set it script-wise without a lot of
effort.

q2) The choice of the word 'pragma' is interesting. Are there people hoping
to accomplish things analogous to the Perl idiom?

comment:

In general, I like this from an architectural perspective. It feels right.

 - Ron

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:

> Ronald Spengler wrote:
>
>> Interesting. While digging around trying to find out what was going on,
>>
>
> Yeah, this stuff ain't pretty. Which is the reason why (in the long term) I
> want to get away from hardcoded Preferences and move to pragmas. The point
> being that a pragma preference, such as TextMorph class>>useNewEditors can
> be discovered by any preference browser/viewer - there is no reason
> whatsoever to have preferences in the kernel at all. A preference is nothing
> but a user-visible variable so all we need is to annotate the variables we
> want to expose.
>
> Plus, it solves a set of issues for preference installation and
> initialization. Have a look at the elaborate dance in SHTextStyler80
> class>>initializePreferences which is only there because one must inject
> preferences into this external entity called Preferences instead of keeping
> them in class vars local to the class/packages where they are needed.
>
> And of course, it gives you an obvious way of changing the preference.
> Instead of Preferences enable: #useNewMorphicEditors you simply set the
> underlying variable, i.e., TextMorph useNewEditors: true. Which is good
> straightforward code that works directly with senders/implementors etc.
>
> Cheers,
>  - Andreas
>
>  I did stumble across PragmaPreference by printing:
>>
>> Preferences allPreferenceObjects
>>
>> ... and searching the resultant text for 'Editors' finding "a
>> PragmaPreference#'Use New Editors' nil#'Use New Editors'" in the output.
>> But the class comment for PragmaPreference:
>>
>> "Differs from superclass by redirecting all queries to preference
>> provider."
>>
>> ... didn't help me any, because I didn't know what was meant by preference
>> provider. For want of Cmd-Shift-E (thank you! awesome!) I just browsed the
>> protocol a bit, looked at the superclass, gave up and cried 'halp!'
>>
>> Maybe I would have grokked this right away had I a better (read: passing)
>> grasp of the superclass, but PragmaPreference feels like it wants to do
>> something of architectural significance. Maybe move preferences off to the
>> actual objects where the behavior is specified, instead of a big pile,
>> perhaps?
>>
>>  - Ron, curiously
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de<mailto:
>> andreas.raab at gmx.de>> wrote:
>>
>>    Ronald Spengler wrote:
>>
>>        How can I talk to preferences that have spaces in them? I'm
>>        trying to add a line to my image configuration script that
>>        enables the Cuis editors automatically.
>>
>>
>>    Cmd-Shift-E (Alt-Shift-E) is your friend. Select "Use New Editors",
>>    press Cmd-Shift-E and the only hit should be TextMorph
>>    class>>useNewEditors with its companion accessor #useNewEditors:.
>>
>>    (what you are seeing here is a pragma preference which shouldn't be
>>    manipulated by its user-visible description)
>>
>>    Cheers,
>>     - Andreas
>>
>>
>>        My usual strategy of:
>>
>>        Preferences
>>        setPreference: #swapMouseButtons toValue: true
>>
>>        ... doesn't seem to work.
>>
>>        When I print:
>>
>>        Preferences setPreference: #'Use New Editors' toValue: true;
>>        valueOfPreference: #'Use New Editors'
>>
>>        ... I get back nil.
>>
>>        Failing that, I also tried:
>>
>>        Preferences togglePreference: #'Use New Editors'
>>
>>        ... which pops a MNU, so in general I think there's something
>>        that I'm failing to understand.
>>
>>        Any help is much appreciated.
>>
>>         - Ron
>>
>>
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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