Hi Folks,
You read right, I'm going to talk about vaporware ;-).
Well, not quite in fact, as some of you might on their computers
something
close to what I'd like to do, albeit in a different area : iTunes.
Specifically, I have played a bit with iTunes' "smart playlists", and
I think something
similar could be implemented for browsing code in squeak (the concept
is not quite new
in fact, these playlists are just requests to a database in disguise,
such as "select
all songs form artist X longer than 5 minutes that I have rated 4 stars
of more").
You could then perform requests such as :
-tests : select all methods from package X, starting with "test"
-non-tests : select all methods from package X, except those in "tests"
-tested : select all methods in "non-tests", who are sent by methods in
"tests"
-hierarchy : select all methods from class X's hierarchy
-recent : select the 50 latest methods accepted
-private : select all methods from class C only sent by methods in C
-protected : select all methods from class X only sent methods in C's
hierarchy
-public : select all methods in class X who are not in "private" or
"protected"
-undocumented : select all classes who's comment is nonexistant ;-)
The interface could be the one of a message list, maybe stealing
iTunes' browser,
which looks really a lot like a smalltak browser already ;-).
I think this kind of tool is currently missing as it could allow a much
faster navigation
in the system, as there is a lot of information that could be used this
way.
Regular browsers, or stacked code panes like Whisker's ones could then
be used to
actually edit code ;-).
What do you think of that ?
Romain