On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 10:05:52PM -0600, Jeff Gonis wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 9:45 PM, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > And I will agree to pretend that it was morally justified. Which in this
> > case might actually be so ;-)
> >
> > I use workspaces for all sorts of things unrelated to "coding". But
> > perhaps some creative
> > person could come up with a convenient way to apply syntax highlighting to
> > specific portions
> > of a workspace? It might be nice if I could have a workspace that contains
> > my grocery shopping
> > list and does syntax highlighting on only the portions of the shopping
> > list that I actually
> > intended to be interpreted as Smalltalk expressions. But I would be very
> > annoyed if some of
> > my workspaces started giving syntax errors related to toothpaste, toilet
> > paper, and six-packs
> > of beer.
> >
> > Or perhaps a smart workspace could distinguish the difference between
> > sections of text
> > that were probably intended as Smalltalk, versus text that was more likely
> > intended as
> > a shopping list?
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
> >
> It seems to me like Squeak just needs some different tools.  A workspace
> strikes me as specifically related to code.  I mean the right click menu
> mentions inspecting, debugging, printing, etc. All things that have as
> little relevance to your grocery list as syntax highlighting would.
> 
> If you need a quick grocery list, why don't we knock up a "Todo" list app,
> throw it on Squeakmap, and have install a menu entry when you load it.
> 

I don't want a "todo" list app, or any other kind of app. I want a neutral
workspace. I want the workspace to let me do whatever I want without complaining.


> We could grab Cuis' text editor project, and throw it up on Squeakmap, and
> now people who wanted to write up a quick message or blog post wouldn't
> have to abuse what is clearly a code tool.
> 
> Rather than trying to overload what a workspace recognizes as text or code,
> we could just add tools more suited to the work you want while making the
> workspace more suited to the job it was designed for. Coding.
> 
> Note that my tone is somewhat provocative here, deliberately so, but hey
> you guys started it, what with your drone strikes and all!

FWIW, your have certainly made me think twice about this. I can think of
times that I have written (too much) code in workspaces, and I did not
think to turn on the syntax highlighting. If I had remembered to do that,
I would have saved myself some time in debugging. So I do think that you
raise a fair point. My own point of view is different (I prefer workspaces
to be neutral unless I set them otherwise), but I see your point.

Dave