Inspector trivia

Hi Blair,

BasicInspector does not select the first item in its list; is there a reason
for the change?  I miss the old behavior :(

A while ago (apparently in beta 1 by the look of things), I ran across a
problem with the flipper inspector and a proxy.  I returned to try to
isolate it, and I found that I couldn't invoke a flipper.  Not (yet)
thinking to try the shift trick on something else, I tried FlipperInspector
showOn:aProxy and ended up with an flipper on the subject of the proxy -
that was possible in the test case but wouldn't always be.  Does
ProtoObject>>inspect have its current form to help avoid problems, or is it
simply a leaner implementation in keeping with the spirit of ProtoObject?
I'm wondering if there might still be a problem via the visual object
finder, or just the #showOn: "loophole"??

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> Hi Blair,
>
> BasicInspector does not select the first item in its list; is there a
reason
> for the change?  I miss the old behavior :(

An unintentional result of it becoming a ValuePresenter I think. The initial
selection is set when the value is changed, but that is happening too early
now (before the view has been created), and hence it gets ignored. Anyway it
is now issue #643.

>
> A while ago (apparently in beta 1 by the look of things), I ran across a
> problem with the flipper inspector and a proxy.  I returned to try to
> isolate it, and I found that I couldn't invoke a flipper.  Not (yet)
> thinking to try the shift trick on something else, I tried
FlipperInspector
> showOn:aProxy and ended up with an flipper on the subject of the proxy -
> that was possible in the test case but wouldn't always be.  Does
> ProtoObject>>inspect have its current form to help avoid problems, or is
it
> simply a leaner implementation in keeping with the spirit of ProtoObject?
>...

Its deliberate - mainly to avoid having to implement more messages in
ProtoObject, but also because it seems appropriate that a FlipperInspector
on that object will show the proxied object, but a BasicInspector will show
the proxy itself (if indeed the purpose of the particular ProtoObject
subclass is to be a proxy).

Regards

Blair

Hi Blair,

> Its deliberate - mainly to avoid having to implement more messages in
> ProtoObject,

Sounds great.


> but also because it seems appropriate that a FlipperInspector
> on that object will show the proxied object,

But what if if it's on a different machine, or perhaps not even a Smalltalk
object?  Even if it is something that is directly inspectable, the user
might not want to pay the price (e.g. a large array separated by a slow
network connection), or might be trying to figure out why the object isn't
reachable at the moment.  I think there's all the more reason to be
conservative since you intend the flipper to be the default inspector.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]