[squeak-dev] bad MessageTrace regression (was: The Trunk: Morphic-mt.1652.mcz)

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Sun Feb 27 00:13:10 UTC 2022


Hi,

sorry for the delay. Exams and things and other things, you know. :-)
>

:-)


> > Just to be clear, nothing is different than what it was before it got
> broken in 5.3.
>
> In Squeak 5.2 (and also 5.3), I could do this:
>
> 1. Type foo
> 2. Browse iMplementors
> 3. Select the first method
> 4. Press the "senders" button
> 5. And a second message trace on the senders of #foo opens.
>

"A second message trace" as in a second window?  That's not the behavior I
see.  That should only happen if traceMessages was not enabled, or if the
keyboard focus was somewhere besides the upper pane.


> This no longer works since the recent changes.
>

So, you want to be able to only forward trace (e.g., add indended
implementors) but replace ability to back trace (add outdented senders)
with only starting yet a new trace?  If so, I'm puzzled why you would want
that.  Back tracing is useful but there'd be no way to do it if it always
opened a new window.


> > Cmd+c+0+v+m. :)
>
> I know and sometimes do that. But you won't be able to convince me that
> this could be as fast as a single button. Also, the search bar/scratch pad
> do not provide support for stacking these conceptual breaks,

sometimes I am parking another doit script there ...
>

Actually, that's precisely why the "scratch pad" was hacked in -- it's
multi-line.  There's your "stack".  :)  Rudimentary, I know, but it works.
Undo also works.

Side note:  the scratch pad in the upper right is a temporary hack -- I
always wanted Cmd+0 to open a BalloonMorph at the hand with the cursor
ready to type, so the user's eyes don't always have to traverse back and
forth to the upper right and back..

> But, I don't care about (b). Traces are normally built via the upper and
> lower pane functions, not the middle button row. So, ONLY for the button
> row between the panes, it seems fine for it to unconditionally open a new
> window. If it's possible to twiggle it dynamically with a modifier key,
> that'd be preferable but, even if not, it seems reasonable to open a new
> window. But we need to maintain the legacy behaviors for the upper and
> lower panes, please.
>
> Alright, please see Tools-ct.1136. I still do not consider this a perfect
> and maximally intuitive solution, but apparently we are a few users of this
> tool only, so if we can find a heuristic that satisfies everyone, this
> might not be a big problem. :-)
>

The heuristic is for building Traces.  I'm not sure if you feel your change
is an optimization of that use-case, or a different one..

Best,
  Chris
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