Pharo6 playground saving semantics and .changes?
Hi - I really like the playground metaphor, it really is such a nice way to experiment. However I've noticed that unlike older versions of Smalltalk, it seems that DoIt operations in playground don't end up in the .changes file anymore (which I guess is a mixed blessing when you want to recover). It seems that the new metaphor is that work you do is saved as a page and you can see versions of your page in the upper right menu? Well sort of - as I haven't quite understood when it saves or doesn't? Often I get duplicate looking pages in that menu and often I make a change and want to keep it but find it doesn't save and if I accidentally close my playground my changes in a page are lost? What are the semantics of page saving? An example - if you do a few gofer loads of utilities and the put a comment on the first line of the page (which gives it a nice title in the page dropdown), sometimes that comment will be saved other times not? I also think it might be nice to remove page versions to help tidy things up. I'm thinking of rolling my sleeves up on this idea - but wanted to understand the vision firsts Tim Sent from my iPhone Sent from my iPhone
One of the more hidden Playground features are named Pages. Double-click the page tab title and give it a name, it will then be saved automagically in pharo-local/play-stash (and auto saves on changes from then on). I use that all the time.
On 29 Jun 2017, at 16:45, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:
Hi - I really like the playground metaphor, it really is such a nice way to experiment.
However I've noticed that unlike older versions of Smalltalk, it seems that DoIt operations in playground don't end up in the .changes file anymore (which I guess is a mixed blessing when you want to recover). It seems that the new metaphor is that work you do is saved as a page and you can see versions of your page in the upper right menu? Well sort of - as I haven't quite understood when it saves or doesn't? Often I get duplicate looking pages in that menu and often I make a change and want to keep it but find it doesn't save and if I accidentally close my playground my changes in a page are lost?
What are the semantics of page saving?
An example - if you do a few gofer loads of utilities and the put a comment on the first line of the page (which gives it a nice title in the page dropdown), sometimes that comment will be saved other times not?
I also think it might be nice to remove page versions to help tidy things up. I'm thinking of rolling my sleeves up on this idea - but wanted to understand the vision firsts
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
Cool - I was missing that insight. Tim Sent from my iPhone
On 29 Jun 2017, at 18:04, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
One of the more hidden Playground features are named Pages. Double-click the page tab title and give it a name, it will then be saved automagically in pharo-local/play-stash (and auto saves on changes from then on). I use that all the time.
On 29 Jun 2017, at 16:45, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:
Hi - I really like the playground metaphor, it really is such a nice way to experiment.
However I've noticed that unlike older versions of Smalltalk, it seems that DoIt operations in playground don't end up in the .changes file anymore (which I guess is a mixed blessing when you want to recover). It seems that the new metaphor is that work you do is saved as a page and you can see versions of your page in the upper right menu? Well sort of - as I haven't quite understood when it saves or doesn't? Often I get duplicate looking pages in that menu and often I make a change and want to keep it but find it doesn't save and if I accidentally close my playground my changes in a page are lost?
What are the semantics of page saving?
An example - if you do a few gofer loads of utilities and the put a comment on the first line of the page (which gives it a nice title in the page dropdown), sometimes that comment will be saved other times not?
I also think it might be nice to remove page versions to help tidy things up. I'm thinking of rolling my sleeves up on this idea - but wanted to understand the vision firsts
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
Please allow me a little rant here... I still find disturbing the"autosave" feature without having the option to explicitly save the contents in the filesystem as I did with Workspaces. Sometimes I don't want the contents of a file/tab updated by a criteria different than when to save the image, it is: my own when I consider appropriate. It's not I want to disable Playground by complete which I find useful when integrated with the inlined insector, but I want to keep the behavior of saving and restoring the contents under my control. Privacywise I don't like the "history" of previous contents in the Playground, the history it can be removed but it can't be disabled. I can condense the changes file, but the Playground history remains. Regards! Esteban A. Maringolo 2017-06-29 17:12 GMT-03:00 Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works>:
Cool - I was missing that insight.
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
On 29 Jun 2017, at 18:04, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
One of the more hidden Playground features are named Pages. Double-click the page tab title and give it a name, it will then be saved automagically in pharo-local/play-stash (and auto saves on changes from then on). I use that all the time.
On 29 Jun 2017, at 16:45, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:
Hi - I really like the playground metaphor, it really is such a nice way to experiment.
However I've noticed that unlike older versions of Smalltalk, it seems that DoIt operations in playground don't end up in the .changes file anymore (which I guess is a mixed blessing when you want to recover). It seems that the new metaphor is that work you do is saved as a page and you can see versions of your page in the upper right menu? Well sort of - as I haven't quite understood when it saves or doesn't? Often I get duplicate looking pages in that menu and often I make a change and want to keep it but find it doesn't save and if I accidentally close my playground my changes in a page are lost?
What are the semantics of page saving?
An example - if you do a few gofer loads of utilities and the put a comment on the first line of the page (which gives it a nice title in the page dropdown), sometimes that comment will be saved other times not?
I also think it might be nice to remove page versions to help tidy things up. I'm thinking of rolling my sleeves up on this idea - but wanted to understand the vision firsts
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
Hi, Tim, I have made a project, called Grafoscopio, that, in its core, is about saving playgrounds and embed them into bigger context/narratives. You can see more details and examples here: [1] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html Still needs work to do, for example improving English documentation and discoverability, as Glenn suggested (Spanish page is better ranked in search engines), but maybe you find it interesting for what you're looking for. See the page at [1] and the examples, to see what is possible at the moment. Cheers, Offray Ps: I share Esteban's concern on privacy and autosave feature, despite of being useful, sometimes, for me and in the workshops. This behavior should be disabled by default and turn on on user demand. (Maybe a tool tip on first launch, like the one on anonymous metrics could help here too). On 29/06/17 15:55, Esteban A. Maringolo wrote:
Please allow me a little rant here...
I still find disturbing the"autosave" feature without having the option to explicitly save the contents in the filesystem as I did with Workspaces. Sometimes I don't want the contents of a file/tab updated by a criteria different than when to save the image, it is: my own when I consider appropriate.
It's not I want to disable Playground by complete which I find useful when integrated with the inlined insector, but I want to keep the behavior of saving and restoring the contents under my control.
Privacywise I don't like the "history" of previous contents in the Playground, the history it can be removed but it can't be disabled. I can condense the changes file, but the Playground history remains.
Regards!
Esteban A. Maringolo
2017-06-29 17:12 GMT-03:00 Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works>:
Cool - I was missing that insight.
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
On 29 Jun 2017, at 18:04, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
One of the more hidden Playground features are named Pages. Double-click the page tab title and give it a name, it will then be saved automagically in pharo-local/play-stash (and auto saves on changes from then on). I use that all the time.
On 29 Jun 2017, at 16:45, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:
Hi - I really like the playground metaphor, it really is such a nice way to experiment.
However I've noticed that unlike older versions of Smalltalk, it seems that DoIt operations in playground don't end up in the .changes file anymore (which I guess is a mixed blessing when you want to recover). It seems that the new metaphor is that work you do is saved as a page and you can see versions of your page in the upper right menu? Well sort of - as I haven't quite understood when it saves or doesn't? Often I get duplicate looking pages in that menu and often I make a change and want to keep it but find it doesn't save and if I accidentally close my playground my changes in a page are lost?
What are the semantics of page saving?
An example - if you do a few gofer loads of utilities and the put a comment on the first line of the page (which gives it a nice title in the page dropdown), sometimes that comment will be saved other times not?
I also think it might be nice to remove page versions to help tidy things up. I'm thinking of rolling my sleeves up on this idea - but wanted to understand the vision firsts
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
Hi Offray - I hadn't understood your project was in this area, I'll have a look. It does sound like some tweaks in playground might be useful. Like many of these things though - you have to live with them for a while to really understand. Tim Sent from my iPhone Sent from my iPhone
On 29 Jun 2017, at 23:54, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas <offray.luna@mutabit.com> wrote:
Hi,
Tim, I have made a project, called Grafoscopio, that, in its core, is about saving playgrounds and embed them into bigger context/narratives. You can see more details and examples here:
[1] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html
Still needs work to do, for example improving English documentation and discoverability, as Glenn suggested (Spanish page is better ranked in search engines), but maybe you find it interesting for what you're looking for. See the page at [1] and the examples, to see what is possible at the moment.
Cheers,
Offray
Ps: I share Esteban's concern on privacy and autosave feature, despite of being useful, sometimes, for me and in the workshops. This behavior should be disabled by default and turn on on user demand. (Maybe a tool tip on first launch, like the one on anonymous metrics could help here too).
On 29/06/17 15:55, Esteban A. Maringolo wrote: Please allow me a little rant here...
I still find disturbing the"autosave" feature without having the option to explicitly save the contents in the filesystem as I did with Workspaces. Sometimes I don't want the contents of a file/tab updated by a criteria different than when to save the image, it is: my own when I consider appropriate.
It's not I want to disable Playground by complete which I find useful when integrated with the inlined insector, but I want to keep the behavior of saving and restoring the contents under my control.
Privacywise I don't like the "history" of previous contents in the Playground, the history it can be removed but it can't be disabled. I can condense the changes file, but the Playground history remains.
Regards!
Esteban A. Maringolo
2017-06-29 17:12 GMT-03:00 Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works>:
Cool - I was missing that insight.
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
On 29 Jun 2017, at 18:04, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
One of the more hidden Playground features are named Pages. Double-click the page tab title and give it a name, it will then be saved automagically in pharo-local/play-stash (and auto saves on changes from then on). I use that all the time.
On 29 Jun 2017, at 16:45, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:
Hi - I really like the playground metaphor, it really is such a nice way to experiment.
However I've noticed that unlike older versions of Smalltalk, it seems that DoIt operations in playground don't end up in the .changes file anymore (which I guess is a mixed blessing when you want to recover). It seems that the new metaphor is that work you do is saved as a page and you can see versions of your page in the upper right menu? Well sort of - as I haven't quite understood when it saves or doesn't? Often I get duplicate looking pages in that menu and often I make a change and want to keep it but find it doesn't save and if I accidentally close my playground my changes in a page are lost?
What are the semantics of page saving?
An example - if you do a few gofer loads of utilities and the put a comment on the first line of the page (which gives it a nice title in the page dropdown), sometimes that comment will be saved other times not?
I also think it might be nice to remove page versions to help tidy things up. I'm thinking of rolling my sleeves up on this idea - but wanted to understand the vision firsts
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
participants (4)
-
Esteban A. Maringolo -
Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas -
Sven Van Caekenberghe -
Tim Mackinnon