Getting rid of coloured code

I, personally, hate my code being coloured by some irritating know-it-all process that wants to tell me how that precious token there is a green-thing and that one is blue. No, it ain't. It's black, it's in my chosen font and you damn well leave it alone.

Not to mention is wastes precious CPU time; the difference on my Pi is between unusable tools and ok tools.

So here is a tiny changeset to rip out the nonsense. Some nice person might like to add a proper, friendly, Preference doohickey. I don't care - I got rid of the annoyance.



tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: CEQ: Corrupt and Erase Queue

Hi Tim,

    see PluggableTextMorphPlus>>useDefaultStyler
        "This should be changed to a proper registry but as long as there is
only shout this will do"
        Smalltalk at: #SHTextStylerST80 ifPresent:[:stylerClass|
                self styler: (stylerClass new view: self).
        ].

So it looks like the right way to go about this is to unload Shout in
the Monticello browser.

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 2:32 PM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:


--
best,
Eliot

On 22-02-2013, at 2:48 PM, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]> wrote:

I have to admit that it would never occur to me that MC could even do such a thing. Makes sense I guess but … you get so habituated to what you're used to that you can totally miss something new.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: FLR: Flash Lights Randomly

On 22-02-2013, at 3:36 PM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> So it looks like the right way to go about this is to unload Shout in
>> the Monticello browser.
>
> I have to admit that it would never occur to me that MC could even do such a thing. Makes sense I guess but … you get so habituated to what you're used to that you can totally miss something new.
>


Yup, that seems to have worked ok; a couple of debugger complaints from existing browsers that could just be dismissed and the browsers closed. So much politer.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Fractured Idiom:- HASTE CUISINE - Fast French food

That's always the first change I make to a new image as well.

I, personally, hate my code being coloured by some irritating know-it-all process that wants to tell me how that precious token there is a green-thing and that one is blue. No, it ain't. It's black, it's in my chosen font and you damn well leave it alone.

Not to mention is wastes precious CPU time; the difference on my Pi is between unusable tools and ok tools.

So here is a tiny changeset to rip out the nonsense. Some nice person might like to add a proper, friendly, Preference doohickey. I don't care - I got rid of the annoyance.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: CEQ: Corrupt and Erase Queue

On 22-02-2013, at 5:26 PM, Bob Arning <[hidden email]> wrote:

> That's always the first change I make to a new image as well.

Glad I'm not the only monochrome curmudgeon around here


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Talks to plants on their own level.

Wow, I'm surprised -- the human eye discerns color contrast much more
easily than patterns.  While I don't care for the standard Shout
colors, by changing them to be more intuitive and constrasting,
particularly for longer methods, the colors _really_ enhance the
readability.  For example, I'm able to instantly see references to
instVars with just a glance because they're gold (dark yellow); or
references to self and super because they're bolded, which quickly
tells me whether this is a "utility" method.  Further, by making
comments a light-gray, they are just barely visible, so they're not
cluttering the code, but still easily readable if I decide to focus on
them for a clarification.  Kind of like simply changing eye-focus
"reveals" different aspects of the code -- what a powerful
"gesture"!..

To each, his own.   :)

On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 12:08 AM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes I agree also with the opinion of Chris, I personally hate the
monochrome code, but is good that each one can
configure / use Squeak as prefer!

2013/2/23 Chris Muller <[hidden email]>:

Chris,
        I'd love to see your do-it to change the Shout colors to ones
you find satisfying.
        A big problem is when you are in the middle of modifying a
method.  As you type, it does not make sense to Shout, and the next
20 lines turn bright red.  That is annoying.  I feel like saying,
"I'm not done yet.  Don't get on my case!".
        Perhaps if there are more than 2 lines in red after the
insertion point, just turn the rest of the method black.  That would
keep things much calmer.  The lack of any other colors would signal
that something is not complete.

--Ted.



At 5:36 PM -0600 2/23/13, Chris Muller wrote:

--
Ted Kaehler
"400 years of scientific enlightenment are being undone by TV shows
on crop circles, ancient astronauts, and haunted buildings."
http://www.vpri.org/html/team_bios/kaehler.html

On 23-02-2013, at 3:36 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Wow, I'm surprised -- the human eye discerns color contrast much more
> easily than patterns.

It's possible that is a very personal effect. I suspect it is at least partially a matter of how good your eyesight is, and very likely relates to your experience too; I've been doing this stuff for far too long and have grown very used to reading Smalltalk. I simply don't need advice from a bit of code about which tokens are messages, variables, comments or whatever. The extraneous data actually distracts from the wanted information, acting almost like camouflage.

[snip]
>   Further, by making
> comments a light-gray, they are just barely visible, so they're not
> cluttering the code,

Now I'd tend to prefer almost hiding the code, since it distracts from the explanation. "Don't document the program, programme the document" as an old colleague pointed out.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
999, the number of the Aussie Beast.

Hi Ted,

Yeah that actually annoys me too. Just because I haven't terminated a statement with a period yet doesn't mean the rest of the code is wrong; grey is probably a better choice than red.

I can't remember how this stuff worked before I gutted it in Cuis, but at least looking at the Cuis version of Theme>>shout (IIRC) and going a couple of methods deep while looking at it might shed some light on how to make this stuff behave better.

Hey while I have you on the line, how is DBJr working out? I'm one of those cats who really misses HyperCard.


Casey

On Feb 23, 2013, at 5:04 PM, Ted Kaehler <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 2/24/13 5:19 AM, "Casey Ransberger" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I'm one of those  cats who really misses HyperCard.

Yes, me too.
I sure if Squeak have how to do basic HyperCard the users base grow much.

What is the status of HyperCard anyway ? Any chance of Apple change to open
source?

Edgar

I have that same reaction to ornamentation of browsers. I feel that the more pixels there are around the code, the harder it is to see the code. To me it's a low signal-to-noise ratio.

Cheers,
Bob

On 23-02-2013, at 3:36 PM, Chris Muller [hidden email] wrote:

> Wow, I'm surprised -- the human eye discerns color contrast much more
> easily than patterns.

It's possible that is a very personal effect. I suspect it is at least partially a matter of how good your eyesight is, and very likely relates to your experience too; I've been doing this stuff for far too long and have grown very used to reading Smalltalk. I simply don't need advice from a bit of code about which tokens are messages, variables, comments or whatever. The extraneous data actually distracts from the wanted information, acting almost like camouflage.

On 24.02.2013, at 11:54, "Edgar J. De Cleene" <[hidden email]> wrote:


Apple, no. But this might be interesting:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1755283828/open-source-edition-of-livecode

- Bert -

On 2/24/13 3:39 PM, "Bert Freudenberg" <[hidden email]> wrote:


Thanks Bert, really is interesting

Edgar

Yes, I saw the videos also, very interesting, but very expensive also :)

2013/2/24 Edgar J. De Cleene <[hidden email]>:

Hi Ted!  I've attached my style-table method (gz'd to avoid e-mail
mangling the line-endings).  It's one method on the class-side of
SHTextStylerST80.  After filing it in you can activate it with:

   SHTextStylerST80 styleTable: SHTextStylerST80 blackOnWhiteStyleTable

The rationale are:

  reserved words :: bold and black.  "Solidity" to indicate an
immutable part of the syntax.
  Class names, symbols and structure (blocks, parens, etc) :: Black
but not bold because the names can vary at least during "development".
:)
  instVars :: Gold because they are the "resources" a class has
available to send messages to.
  message selectors :: Dark Green because they invoke behaviors.
  comments :: Light-Gray to be non-instrusive, but still easily read.
  literal constants :: Dark Red to stand out and also to discourage
heavy use of constants in code.
  arguments :: Rust because they are rigid, they cannot be assigned.
  temp-vars :: Dark Cyan because they're pliable like.. clouds or water..

And, finally,

  "bad" code :: magenta because its absolutely hideous, which strongly
encourages me to take appropriate action to bring it down to a normal
color.  I typically never save a method with an unimplemented sender,
so having the method name highlighted in majenta in a background
window is a highly-visible reminder.  It's brightness can sometimes be
used to advantage to to "highlight" all occurrences of a variable in a
method by temporarily removing one character from its declaration.

I use the "Auto Enclose" preference to avoid majenta when using
structure (parents, brackets, etc.).

Cheers,
  Chris


On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 7:04 PM, Ted Kaehler <[hidden email]> wrote:

Chris and Folks,
        I chose a slightly different path for taming Shout.  Here is
how to change the colors that Shout uses to put syntax-related colors
on code in the browser.

There is a preference called "subduedSyntaxHighlights".  It defaults
to true, and makes your comment text be blue-green or teal.  If you
have set it to false, comments in code are bright green.  You don't
need to change preference.

If comments are blue-green or teal, find the color-setting method by executing:
(MessageSet openMessageList: {'SHTextStylerST80 class
subduedStyleTable'} name: 'Modify Shout Colors')

If comments are bright green, colors are controlled by this other method.
(MessageSet openMessageList: {'SHTextStylerST80 class
defaultStyleTable'} name: 'Modify Shout Colors')

The method contains a table that specifies the color for each
syntactic element.  The table begins:

        (default black )
        (invalid red )
        (excessCode red )

Just change lines 2 and 3 to a less jarring color, such as black.

        (default black )
        (invalid (red lighter) )
        (excessCode black )

Accept and then execute:

SHTextStylerST80 initialize.

Then browse code.

(Note a small confusion.  The non-default setting of
subduedSyntaxHighlights calls the "default" method,
defaultStyleTable.  The default setting calls subduedStyleTable.)

--Ted.


--
Ted Kaehler
"400 years of scientific enlightenment are being undone by TV shows
on crop circles, ancient astronauts, and haunted buildings."
http://www.vpri.org/html/team_bios/kaehler.html

Actually RunRev has done a nice Hypercard clone and sold for years.
Good to see that they now want to re-engineer it and make it
open-source.

BTW VPRI did some work on DynaBook Junior in 2009
http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2009015_DBjr.pdf

They claim that they can do Hypercard like things with very few
classes. It would be nice to have the proof of concept running in a
recent Squeak (4.3. or 4.4) and available as open-source as well.

--Hannes

On 2/24/13, Germán Arduino <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 2/24/13, Germán Arduino <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Yes, I saw the videos also, very interesting, but very expensive also :)
>
Yes,
but t seems that they'll make it to open source it

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1755283828/open-source-edition-of-livecode

Nice to see that there could be an open-source edition of a Hypercard
type of authoring system.

On the other side I'd like to see something like that in
Squeak/Cuis/Pharo as well.

--Hannes