I can understand Lauras point. I used spotlight quite a lot for searching messages and classes, even
if I know the exact name of the message or class, so I don't use it only for "searching" but as an interface
to quickly open a new Browser or MessageList.

There are some minor differences that actually make a big difference, if you are used to it, more below.
BUT and this is a big "but" and an advantage for spotter

1. Spotlight does not find all items and even if you type in a the exact class name that exists, the first entries
spotlight shows, may only include that name. (Searching and opening a browser for String or Morph for example)
2. even if I miss spotlight, the power of spotter (searching everything, extensibility and search in the resultlist) outweigh this for me.


2015-02-07 23:38 GMT+01:00 Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com>:
Hi,

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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, ... ).

I think you are misinterpreting the goal of Spotter. It is meant to provide a uniform interface to search all sorts of objects that you see interesting, and it even offers a cheap way to tweak its behavior to your needs. Here is a post that describes it in more details:

This is not quite fair :)
She said, for her spotlight is more useful, you asked for details, she said explained it and your conclusion is " you misinterpeting the goal of spotter" :)

The "minor" differences:
- most of the time I am searching for classes and message, I do not use scripts and rarely search for files.
often, I know what kind of thing I am searching, messages for example, I type in "transform" because I search for a message that starts with that word.
- spotlight shows messages with the word "transform"
- spotter shows classes with the world "Transform", packages with the word "Transform" and than a list of 5 method names.
- spotlight displays just the message name
- spotter shows ClassName>>#messagename ( <- this is more difficult to read because the result entries starting with an unrelated word, the class name)
searching for implementors, I often use the search result afterwards.
- spotlight opens a MessageList
- with spotter I can only open a Browser for one implementor.

Again, the above points are not arguments for spotlight over spotter, they just explain why I am more used to the way spotlight works for the class and method search - I do.


nicolai