Third Party Packages

Folks,

During development we tend to run with an image with many third party
Dolphin tools installed. This means that during refactoring all of the
tools get upgraded to work in the latest image. This will, of course,
mean that they are likely to be different from the originals held by
the various authors.

I'd like to found out from the package authors which of their tools
they would like to be pre-installed a) in the beta image and b) in the
final D6 image. Currently we run with stuff from these third party
authors (in no particular order):

Ian Bartholomew
Chris Uppal (Metagnostic)
Bill Schwab (DSDN)
OdelSoft (SUnit Browser)
Refactory (RB, SmaCC)
Steve Waring (Swazoo, HTTPClient.. lots more)
Chris Demers (Workspace lookup.. probably replaced by D6 facilities now)

We also have SolutionSoft's ReStore but since that is a commercial
product I'll just e-mail a copy to John and not pre-install it in the
image.

I'd be grateful if the authors (who should all be members of the beta
programme) could let me know their answers to a) and b) above by
replying to this message. If I don't hear back from you, we won't
pre-install the packages without permission.

Best regards

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

Andy,

Feel free to include any of my additions in the beta or the the final
release.

The only caveat would be that I've already made some changes to the
ChunkBrowser in preparation for D6 (UI changes and a rewrite of some of the
internals) so a CB included in the beta image would be superceded quite
quickly.

--
Ian

Use the Reply-To address to contact me.
Mail sent to the From address is ignored.

Andy,

> I'd like to found out from the package authors which of their tools
> they would like to be pre-installed a) in the beta image and b) in the
> final D6 image.

(a) and (b) are both fine by me.  (Flattering, in fact ;-)

    -- chris

Andy,

> Feel free to include any of my additions in the beta or the the final
> release.

Unless Ian wishes to disagree, I would say that goes for DSDN too - it's
  a joint product, so his vote counts as much as mine (if not more<g>).


Have a good one,

Bill


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

Ian,

> Feel free to include any of my additions in the beta or the the final
> release.

Thanks.

> The only caveat would be that I've already made some changes to the
> ChunkBrowser in preparation for D6 (UI changes and a rewrite of some
> of the internals) so a CB included in the beta image would be
> superceded quite quickly.

I think I noticed that you'll need some  more changes to handle the new
resource format. But, anyway just send us the fixed package when ready
and we'll update the subsequent releases.

Best regards

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

Please include them all, I have found these tools to be indispensable over
the years! :)

"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> I'd like to found out from the package authors which of their tools
> they would like to be pre-installed a) in the beta image and b) in the
> final D6 image. Currently we run with stuff from these third party
...
> Chris Demers (Workspace lookup.. probably replaced by D6 facilities now)
...

I suspect that the Dolphin 6.0 code completion will probably render much of
my lookup tool obsolete.  My plan would be to follow the lead of the Dolphin
6.0 code completion and work on a goodie that enhances it if I want it to do
more than it does. Obviously I can't really formulate much of a plan until I
see D6. ;)  It is possible that the D6 code completion features will do
everything I need out of the box.  If I produce any enhancements OA would be
welcome to those, otherwise I will release a goodie on my own.

One thing I think I would really like to see included in Dolphin one day
(and I am not saying that it has to be my tool or even be in D6) would be
some assistance in generating simple Presenter code.  See what I have here
http://www.cjd77.com/smalltalk/PresenterGenTool.htm .  What it does is
generate instance variables in a presenter class for sub-presenters, it also
creates or updates the createComponents method to populate the sub-presenter
variables based on the type of child views.  I find that it usually does a
good job guessing the presenter class for most simple GUI components and I
can easily edit the code when I need to.  I have become totally dependant
upon this capability.  I just find it too mind-numbing to have to type a
whole bunch of code that could easily be automatically generated.  Too often
I used to miss-type the string name of a view, since there is no error it is
easy to miss.  My presenter generator is not perfect, but I think the rough
concept is sound.  I think that something like this would make it easier for
newbies to understand MVP as well.  They could create a presenter class,
create a view with named text boxes (for example), run a presenter generator
and the createComponents method could be done for them.  All they would have
to do would be to connect their model to the sub-presenters and they would
have something they could play with quickly without so much typing.

Chris

Andy Bower wrote:

> I'd be grateful if the authors (who should all be members of the beta
> programme) could let me know their answers to a) and b) above by
> replying to this message. If I don't hear back from you, we won't
> pre-install the packages without permission.

You can install any of my packages in either a) or b). In fact, SmaCC is
under the MIT license, so you can do whatever you want with it without
asking :)...


John Brant

Hi Andy,

Please feel free to include any of my packages in a) or b).

Thanks,
Steve
--
Steve Waring
[hidden email]

Chris,

> One thing I think I would really like to see included in Dolphin one day
> (and I am not saying that it has to be my tool or even be in D6) would be
> some assistance in generating simple Presenter code.  

Agreed.  I come at the problem from the opposite direction: generate
code and views from "meta data", though I see lots of value in "code
from view" approach too.  I use my (somewhat misnamed) CodeGenerator
package to present a preview of proposed changes.  I also suspect that
some well chosen IDE extensions could provide useful functionality for
adding schematic wiring.  Imagine right clicking on a subview to get a
wizard that lists its published events, and proposes code for an
associated method and any tweaks to #createSchematicWiring.

Have a good one,

Bill

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

Ian Bartholomew wrote:

> Feel free to include any of my additions in the beta or the the final
> release.

A while ago on the public group there was discussion about creating some
form of automated dolphin library repository, somewhat like squeakmap,
or the Cincom public store.

Where the latest versions of third-party packages such as you mention
here can be easily sourced, and remotely filed into a image.  Does
anyone know if any progress was made on this?

With the D6 release looming, having something like this in from the
start would be a great addition...

mark