Search scope

This is more of a suggestion for the future but I thought I'd mention it now
(while I remember).

In the old Cooper & Peters editor for Visual Smalltalk all the Find and
Search dialogs had a little drop down combo list that allowed you to select
the scope for the operation ("All Methods", "Methods in Current Class" etc).

I was wondering, with the arrival of the System Browser, if something
similar might now be possible for Dolphin. There are a lot of Find
operations in Dolphin that don't start with a dialog so it wouldn't be
exactly the same, but I was thinking of a main/context menu item which
allowed you to select a default scope but easily allowed temporary changes.
The options would be something like

All Methods
Selected Folder (all packages in)
* Selected Folder (all packages in and below)
Selected Package(s)
Selected Class
Selected Class and subclasses
Selected Class and superclasses

and probably others I haven't thought of, with the splat being the default.

Comments?

Regards
    Ian

I used that feature in CP pretty often.  As I remember, there also was a
string search that had that scoping, which in some cases was useful.

jlo

"Ian Bartholomew" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> This is more of a suggestion for the future but I thought I'd mention it
now
> (while I remember).
>
> In the old Cooper & Peters editor for Visual Smalltalk all the Find and
> Search dialogs had a little drop down combo list that allowed you to
select
> the scope for the operation ("All Methods", "Methods in Current Class"
etc).
>
> I was wondering, with the arrival of the System Browser, if something
> similar might now be possible for Dolphin. There are a lot of Find
> operations in Dolphin that don't start with a dialog so it wouldn't be
> exactly the same, but I was thinking of a main/context menu item which
> allowed you to select a default scope but easily allowed temporary
changes. default.
>
> Comments?
>
> Regards
>     Ian
>
>
>

"Jeffrey Odell" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> I used that feature in CP pretty often.  As I remember, there also was a
> string search that had that scoping, which in some cases was useful.

Yes. I just checked the manual (which I just happen to have to hand!) and
you could do Find/Replace of text with various scopes and use regular
expressions.

It was a fine bit of software. The only bit of it that I remember being
difficult, and this brings us back to D5, is that it had a configurable
source reformatter. I spent *hours* trying to set it up to reformat in the
style I preferred ... but it beat me in the end.

Regards
    Ian

Ian,

> I was wondering, with the arrival of the System Browser, if something
> similar might now be possible for Dolphin. There are a lot of Find
> operations in Dolphin that don't start with a dialog so it wouldn't be
> exactly the same, but I was thinking of a main/context menu item which
> allowed you to select a default scope but easily allowed temporary
changes.

I like that idea.  Effectively it would be changing the mental model of a
method browser from "display a list of method that satisfy some criterion
(and make a reasonable attempt to keep that list up to date)", to "display a
list of *all* the methods in the system filtered according to one or more
criteria that I (the user) can change".

As it happens, I've been playing around with ideas like that for some time,
but they have never bubbled up to high enough priority for me to get around
to writing even experimental code (unless you count the "dropping filter"
experiment).

> The options would be something like
>
> All Methods
> Selected Folder (all packages in)
> * Selected Folder (all packages in and below)
> Selected Package(s)
> [...]

How about adding:

Selected package(s) and prerequisites,
Selected package(s), prerequisites, and dependants.

    -- chris