From: David Buck [mailto:
[hidden email]]
> For example, if you install VisualWorks from the CD-ROM and launch the
> image from the Program Files menu (on Windows) you can start to
develop
> immediately. Unfortunately, when you go to save your image, it tells
you
> that the image file is read only and prompts you to save it as another
> file name. If you take VW's advice, then when you launch the image
again
> through the Program Files menu, it doesn't have any of your changes.
That's rather embarrassing. How can we act surprised that Smalltalk
finds it hard to attract new developers?
> Can we default the image file to read-write? A clean image is already
> stored in a ZIP file in the image directory anyway. There should be
> another menu item to open the ZIP file to allow you to restore the
image
> back to a clean state.
That's one quick solution. It's still not perfect, and I don't know
whether VW could expand the zip file, but it's clearly much better for
new users, with no harm or risk to existing users. Since it changes no
code, it's also easy enough to implement and document that it could make
7.5, if there's any will at all in Cincom to make the product attractive
to new users.
> Personally, I'd like to go one step further. I never use the image in
> the Cincom directory. I always create a new directory for a project,
> copy the image there, and create a shortcut to launch the image. If
> this could be wrapped into a menu item to "Setup a VisualWorks
Project",
> then it would make it easier for everyone.
I rarely do that, and I'm not sure it's the right way to go. It's
certainly not the expected behavior in Windows that each new "document"
requires its own directory. One way to get closer to the expected
behavior would be something like this:
1) The Start menu shortcut is made to VisualWorks.exe, with no argument,
but a working directory of $VISUALWORKS\image
2) If there is no argument, VisualWorks.exe would open a file dialog to
pick a .im file
3) When the .im file is chosen, VisualWorks.exe changes the working
directory to the image's directory, and starts the image as it does
today.
To go even further, we could hide visual.im (e.g. by having it in
another directory). Starting VisualWorks.exe without an argument would
start visual.im, rather like Word opens with an empty document. The
first save would be Save As... rather than Save, i.e. would prompt for a
new image filename rather than assuming visual.im. The visual.cha file
would thus grow with the changes from each new image up to the point it
is saved, rather like Envy's doit.log. The image could also have File |
Open..., which would prompt for another image, start it, and exit from
the current image (prompting before exiting if there are "unsaved
changes").
I'm thinking here of Windows, but I wouldn't be surprised if this kind
of approach would also work better on other platforms.
Steve
Locked
