Hi Glenn, I made also the transition for the plain "dead" text-files based mindset to live objects. My approach to bridge these two words was to create Grafoscopio [1], where I can save my scripts and put them inside a broader context/narrative. This environment let's me go from scripting/files to objects / code browser and back and I have found this is useful for non programmers (researchers, hacktivists, journalist), because they can have a notebook for their explorations. For example, recently we started a pretty specific project at [2] using this interactive notebook + code browser approach (see screenshot attached below). [1] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html [2] http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Offray/DPYA If you're interested in Grafoscopio, please follow the manual and take into account that now we're trying to migrate to Pharo 6. Cheers, Offray On 11/06/17 18:22, Glenn Hoetker wrote:
Hi all. Iâm new to Pharo and loving it. As I transition from a text-file based mindset, Iâm a little stuck and would appreciate help in how to think about a situation in a Pharonic (Pharo-ish, Pharoc?) way.
Iâm crafting a short program to help me process a large text file (specifically: extract, sorting, and regularizing the âkeywordâ fields of a large BibTex file). Especially since I donât really know what Iâm doing, working in a Playground has been a great development environment. Now that the program is complete (under 30 lines, wonderful), I want to be able to save it for future reference (and perhaps for future use). If Iâd written a shell script, Iâd just save âfixBibDeskKeyWords.shâ to a directory. Iâm not sure what to do in the Pharo environment, thought.
At the moment, it just lives in the Playground Iâve developed it on. I could save the image and leave that Playground open, but Iâm just positive thatâs not a best practice. I also worry about what happens if I closed/cleared that Playground by accident.
I think I understand that, if I created a new package, I could use Monticello to save it to a local cache and load it into a new image whenever I needed it. But, given that itâs short, highly specialized and fairly linear, the idea of creating a âGHBibDeskStuffâ package with one class (âGBibDeskKeywordFixerâ containing a single âFixFileâ method seems really heavy and awkward.
Can one save the contents of a Playground in a Pharonic way? Is there a better approach?
Thank you to all involved in this wonderful programming ecosystem. I appreciate any advice.
Glenn
Glenn Hoetker ghoetker@me.com <mailto:ghoetker@me.com> http://hoetker.faculty.asu.edu
