Yep, IDE tools in Pharo are at least a few years behind what you can find in other IDEs, at least in terms of usability. This is a known problem :) and there already has been a stream of propositions, enhancements, and talks about this (I myself did a presentation at ESUG 2009 about what I wanted). The issue was also discussed at the last Pharo sprint, and the major problem is simply lack of resources: nobody has the time nor the money to invest at least 2 or 3 months full work, in order to do a major clean up/rewrite of the graphical framework for dev tools (which would be a good first step). Now there is Morphic which is low-level, OB which is complicated, Glamour which needs enhancements...
However, the primary annoyance right now is the dichotomy between the OB new framework and the O2 derived for David's work. The problem is that now, whenever the tools changed in OB (especially refactoring support), O2 can not follow and it breaks the tools in the package browser.
1) Remove O2SystemBrowser from the menu. Does anybody uses this browser? It's the same as OBSystemBrowser, so I guess people either use OBSystemBrowser or O2PackageBrowser.
2) How can we backport changes from O2 into OB?
About the taskbar: I'm more and more convinced that the taskbar does not work well for me, in particular does not scale. I would prefer something like the Mac Os dock. On the other hand, Algernon is a great tool to navigate quickly to a class (unfortunately, it does not support yet the queries as in a Mercury panel).
On 18 d�c. 2009, at 11:21, C�drick B�ler wrote:
I think we should rename 1.1. It's not #alpha, it's #unstable.
good idea.
Just as a feedback. I tried to use Pharo to implement some algorithms in course I'm giving. This was instructive ... but I think I won't do it next year (except if I implement a pseudo-language a la etoy tile to do algorithmics). The major showstopper was Smalltalk syntax (except for good students). But, more importantly I think (and it bet this was far worst in squeak) is the lack of coherence, ergonomy, etc... I know this is something difficult. I don't espacially care for myself as I know all workarounds but these are really annoying for newcomer who at the end have a feelling of "this doesn't really work". I think ergonomy and coherence is something to discuss... Here are some remarks:
-I've always felt bored with the tool size that I always are resizing manually (I would prefer full screen by default actually)
-some shortcuts works with alt and ctrl, some only with alt (disturbing for newcomer that are used to ctrl - I use alt)
-shortcuts are working primarly for qwerty keyboards (especially those that add remove [])
-the selection of the code pane is sometime boring too... you have to click twice, or deselect/select
-...
I know I should open bugs tickets for that and will do it (just tell me those).
But more importantly, I think we should agree on these important usability feature. And especially, I'd like we rethink the browser. Alain did the whisker browser no ? What I want to say here is that it might be more appropriate for newcomers to have one big robust coding tool (classic browser + workspace + Transcript + Test Runner). I cannot do that by myself but it could be one topic to discuss in a meeting.
--
C�drick
ps: again, I think experienced smalltalkers will keep on using old classic tools but this represent too much distraction for newcomers.
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