Hi Doru , On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 9:40 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:
In the latest Pharo 4 Spotter works properly with the Dark Theme.
Starting from a fresh image (downloaded this week), and doing nothing more than setting the theme to Pharo 3 Dark, GTSpotter shows white, what is curious because GTInspector and GTPlayground show dark. Could you elaborate? Where do you see the difference? What do you mean by
"more direct"?
I'll tell you what i think based exclusively on my personal preferences (like the black theme) and not having tried the tool for very long, probably there are additional customizations and features i ignore, so my opinion won't be fully qualified. For accessing+navigating the world menu, i like better a global shortcut+the world menu itself, because, unlike Spotter, there is a visual depiction of submenus that let you recognize them beforehand, and when you type to navigate items stay at place so i don't have to visually rescan (to me these qualities are directness ones). In addition, unlike Spotter , word menu opens where the ponter is, so i could choose where to open it if i wanted to. To quickly find and/or browse classes and msg implementations/senders is a need i frequently face (many times i know the names and want a quick access without "polluting" where i am), which can occur in two forms, with or without context. In the contextual case (like browsing from within a class/method) the tool i'm using provides me the browse facilities to address the need. In the uncontextual case, i have Spotlight and Spotter . Spotlight addresses the need directly in two steps 1° find the cls/msg "name" 2°open a specialized (info+actions) browser on it in a regular window (modal/movable/resizeable). The model is a simple direct one-to-one mapping of what i want to do, doesn't make me think how to do what i want to do. In contrast, from the perspective of that need, Spotter -Doesn't search "names" (class names/selectors) but implementations, overlaping the two actions of the need (when i olny hava a clue and i'm not sure of the name i'm interesed into, i don't care for the list of implementations, is obstrusive "garbage"). Forcing me to unnecessarily think how to do what i want to do. In addition i find it hard to think about the tool because i can't figure out a statement of purpose for it, perhaps "global search for a name", but i'm not sure of "global" because it doesn't do source code. -Shows me "garbage" i have to mentally filter (world menu, packages, pragmas, ... ). -Only shows me 5 (implementation) results at the time. - Its window misses the useful qualities of a regular one, which are in many cases useful (sometimes i want to keep the list of implementations/senders open). I don't understand the motivation of this absence, why is better to not have/implement them than to do so? Also i don't understand the motivation of its fixed size/position, i find them annoying, a centered rectangle which impedes me to see anything else and of a size which also makes me hard to read it contents and forces me to scroll, and i "can't" do anything about it because it is fixed, seems a warning sign. Spotlight opens on a corner giving me the choice of seeing something else if i wanted to. -Because it searches implementations instead of selectors it avoids MessageBrowser which (to me) offers a much richer experience for browsing impementations/senders (dual views, more info of implementations like its package, more actions). I want to stress one more time that this is my personal opinion for myself, and while i probably won't use the tool i think that Spotlight and Spotter should coexist as other tools do (like Workspace and Playground) because one tool can't fit all mindsets/preferences. Does anyone know why was Spotlight removed from distribution v4?
Cheers, Doru
Thank you for being interested in my opinion. Best, Laura