[UI] Compiler messages

[tim Rowledge]

On 13-Nov-07, at 9:18 AM, Bill Schwab wrote:

> Colin,
>
> First, not meaning to be dense, I load the code and the compiler
> continues to nag me over both selectors and variables.  Do I need to  
> set
> the mode, or does you fix work only with specific browsers?

Take a look at the code Bill; Colin made changes to abstract the  
notifications by raising specific signals instead of explicitly using  
menus. If you want to handle the exceptions you can. The defaultAction  
is to open a menu as before, a very logical and reasonable choice.

> I would probably opt to simply patch it enough to stop the nonsense,  
> at
> least to start.

That's exactly what Colin's code does. It stops the nonsense and  
provides a way for clients to do what they need as well as leaving the  
system fully functional when there is no specific handling of errors.  
The next part of the job would be to find all the relevant places  
where the Parser is used (ie start with all senders of the public  
access protocols in the Parser class) and to decide whether to handle  
the exceptions or not. Without digging into it too far I'd suggest  
that a subclass of Compiler (called perhaps InteractiveCompiler) be  
built that handled all the exceptions with menus  or preferably better  
dialogues. Then the various browsers would be altered to use  
InteractiveCompiler instead of the plain old Compiler. This could even  
allow nicer behaviour such as showing where a shadowed varname is  
'originally' used, stuff integrated into the actual browser.  
Eventually you could change the defaultAction for the exceptions to  
just open a debugger since they'd now be more of a system error. For  
any batch loading system - like a changeset loader or whatever - you  
would add another subclass of Compiler (say ChangeSetLoaderCompiler)  
that handles the exceptions appropriately. If you look at  
PositionableStream>fileInAnnouncing: you'll see how some of that is  
curently handled, more as a bad example than anything. Also look at  
all references to InMidstOfFileinNotification. Err, yuck.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: BOZO: Use Multics operating system