Pharo IDE usability (was Re: Pharo for Professional Development)

Yep, IDE tools in Pharo are at least a few years behind what you can find in other IDEs, at least in terms of usability.

This is a known problem :) and there already has been a stream of propositions, enhancements, and talks about this (I myself did a presentation at ESUG 2009 about what I wanted).

The issue was also discussed at the last Pharo sprint, and the major problem is simply lack of resources: nobody has the time nor the money to invest at least 2 or 3 months full work, in order to do a major clean up/rewrite of the graphical framework for dev tools (which would be a good first step). Now there is Morphic which is low-level, OB which is complicated, Glamour which needs enhancements...

However, the primary annoyance right now is the dichotomy between the OB new framework and the O2 derived for David's work. The problem is that now, whenever the tools changed in OB (especially refactoring support), O2 can not follow and it breaks the tools in the package browser.

1) Remove O2SystemBrowser from the menu. Does anybody uses this browser? It's the same as OBSystemBrowser, so I guess people either use OBSystemBrowser or O2PackageBrowser.

2) How can we backport changes from O2 into OB?

About the taskbar: I'm more and more convinced that the taskbar does not work well for me, in particular does not scale. I would prefer something like the Mac Os dock. On the other hand, Algernon is a great tool to navigate quickly to a class (unfortunately, it does not support yet the queries as in a Mercury panel).

On 18 déc. 2009, at 12:33, Cédrick Béler wrote:

Yep, IDE tools in Pharo are at least a few years behind what you can find in other IDEs, at least in terms of usability.

yes and this is sad because in term of real possiblities, this is far better to me...

 

This is a known problem :) and there already has been a stream of propositions, enhancements, and talks about this (I myself did a presentation at ESUG 2009 about what I wanted).

Yes It was interesting :) I agreed on most of them (especially the "in context search" which is essential to me)

Discussing with Lukas, it appears there is an API for the contextual search, which the environment browsers use. It needs some documentation, perhaps better names and UI.

 

The issue was also discussed at the last Pharo sprint, and the major problem is simply lack of resources: nobody has the time nor the money to invest at least 2 or 3 months full work, in order to do a major clean up/rewrite of the graphical framework for dev tools (which would be a good first step). Now there is Morphic which is low-level, OB which is complicated, Glamour which needs enhancements...

Yes I know all that !

That why it probably better to discuss first.

Maybe the proposition to pay someone (the count me in stuff) could be used for that. 

Because to me this is not just a problem but the BIG problem (at least so that newcommers don't leave with a bad feeling). Pay someone for 3 months is easier than for 12 :). And you could count me in for that (to give a contribution and also to participate) :)

Every Dolphin users seems enligthened by their tools. Couldn't we mimic them ?

Laurent just made propositions, you too in your ESUG presentation. We should collect, organize and provide a clear view of what we expect. Then maybe pay someone or simply create a project but with clear goals. 

Then make this tool rock solid (even in alpha or unstable ;) )

That's already a lot of things to do actually. But I'm open to discussions. The big problem is that we can discuss at length, but get nothing in the end: myself I still havent found the time to do basic stuff in Morphic!

Anyway, the more I think, the more I'm convinced we need a team of integrators to build/test the dev image, because the core team is going on but the dev is always lagging behind and does not give a good impression to new programmers.

 

However, the primary annoyance right now is the dichotomy between the OB new framework and the O2 derived for David's work. The problem is that now, whenever the tools changed in OB (especially refactoring support), O2 can not follow and it breaks the tools in the package browser.

1) Remove O2SystemBrowser from the menu. Does anybody uses this browser? It's the same as OBSystemBrowser, so I guess people either use OBSystemBrowser or O2PackageBrowser.

2) How can we backport changes from O2 into OB?

I use OB. I gave up on the package browser to have a snappier reaction. But, with all due respect, these are projects. The abstraction behind OB make some operations difficult. IMO, this could be easier to use classic rigid tool (as we ( I ) want only one big coding tool). But I actually don't care of what's behind as far as it works as defined in the future specs.

 

About the taskbar: I'm more and more convinced that the taskbar does not work well for me, in particular does not scale. I would prefer something like the Mac Os dock. On the other hand, Algernon is a great tool to navigate quickly to a class (unfortunately, it does not support yet the queries as in a Mercury panel).

Mercury seems quite broken to me. I've stopped looking at it and using it.

Strange. It's one of the feature I use the most.

Mercury and Algernon by the way need also some kind of uniformisation.

Do we start some actions in the direction of that ? What other thinks ?

 

Cédrick

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 Simon

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Lukas Renggli wrote:
>
> The browser environments are described in (upcoming) "Pharo by
> Example" chapter "Reflection" in the section "Browsing environments":
>
> https://www.iam.unibe.ch/scg/svn_repos/SqueakByExample/PharoBook/Reflection/Reflection.tex
>

Is there an HTML version or how do I read this .tex thingy?

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