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Useful tools?

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laura

Useful tools?

Hi all,

What are some tools / plug-ins/ projects / packages / frameworks

you find very useful or you use very frequently for development?

(please for each name it and state it's purpose)

I'm a newcomer to Pharo , so it hasn't to be something rare.

On the side...

I feel curious about how one gets to know about the existence of such resources. Is there any sort of "resources index" (like a wiki page with categories)? Besides books which can't be comprehensive because of their nature. Such an index would be extremely handy in many ways.

Do you agree? Is it plausible, if it doesn't exist, to built it collaboratively?

It is a sad thing that useful tools go unnoticed when they could have solved a problem you faced or eased your work if only you've known about their existence. For what i've read on spread posts i feel like there are many such tools.

I had this experience of useful resource existence ignorance with TilingWindowManager (LaurentLaffont ) and with RBConfigurableFormatter (by the way i can't figure out how to turn it on). Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my OS but anyway...)

Best,

Laura

hernanmd

Re: Useful tools?

Hi Laura,

2015-01-13 0:58 GMT-03:00 Laura Risani <[hidden email]>:

Hi all,

What are some tools / plug-ins/ projects / packages / frameworks
you find very useful or you use very frequently for development?
(please for each name it and state it's purpose)

Well, it depends really what's your domain.

Mine is bioinformatics applied to phylogenetics in research, this includes :

Visualization (choropleths, charts, histograms, etc): Roassal, GraphViz.
XML parsing: XML Parser, XMLPullParser, XPath.
Parsing: PetitParser.
UI development: Spec (requires knowledge of Morphic and event frameworks like Announcements)
Application Security: http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~hernan/ApplicationSecurity
Iliad (Web Framework): http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~hernan/Iliad
Komanche (Web Server): http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~hernan/KomHttpServer

NumericalMethods (Math package)
GIS: There is still no really a package for this, but I wrote one named "Territorial" for my needs. And using Shapes for ESRI files.
OS access: ProcessWrapper, OSWindows, OSProcess.
Testing: SUnit.
BioSmalltalk: My package for doing bioinformatics with Smalltalk.

and surely others which I forgot now

Most of them are accessible from the Configuration Browser in Pharo 3, or by searching in http://www.smalltalkhub.com/

I'm a newcomer to Pharo , so it hasn't to be something rare.

Welcome :)

On the side...
I feel curious about how one gets to know about the existence of such resources. Is there any sort of "resources index" (like a wiki page with categories)? Besides books which can't be comprehensive because of their nature. Such an index would be extremely handy in many ways.
Do you agree? Is it plausible, if it doesn't exist, to built it collaboratively?

There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting effort on it right now. I think it needs some love.

The URL I have is

https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/job/PharoProjectCatalog/HTML_Report/

and you can get it running by evaluating (have not checked now)

Gofer it 
	smalltalkhubUser: 'DamienCassou' project: 'Pier-Gutemberg';
	configurationOf: 'Catalog';
	loadStable

It is a sad thing that useful tools go unnoticed when they could have solved a problem you faced or eased your work if only you've known about their existence. For what i've read on spread posts i feel like there are many such tools.

There are many tools in Smalltalk! For application development sometimes you just find them browsing Google, there are old packages with lot of features you may apply. But check carefully because many of them were written for a particular domain or use case.

I had this experience of useful resource existence ignorance with TilingWindowManager (LaurentLaffont ) and with RBConfigurableFormatter (by the way i can't figure out how to turn it on).

Have you tried to use System -> Settings browser -> Formatter?

Cheers,

Hernán

Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my OS but anyway...)

Best,
Laura

Piotr Klibert

Re: Useful tools?

Hi,

nice timing - I returned to Pharo after a couple of months spent
elsewhere and I'm facing the same challenges as Laura. So, a couple of
additional comments and questions from me:

>
> Have you tried to use System -> Settings browser -> Formatter?
>

This setting seems to live under "Refactoring engine" category in the
settings, it is there in vanilla Pharo 3.0 image, but not in the image
downloaded from here:
http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/installing-gtoolkit

Which package is responsible for adding this setting and in which version?

BTW: it seems that Roassal and at least parts of Glamour don't want to
work with bitmap fonts (StrikeFont does not understand
#glyphRendererOn: IIRC) at all, despite bitmap font being the default
(at least on Linux).

>
> Most of them are accessible from the Configuration Browser in Pharo 3, or by
> searching in http://www.smalltalkhub.com/
>

Two questions here:

1. The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any
kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of
packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I
have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad,
Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a
single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge
improvement. Can this be added?

2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available
packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some
library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do
much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than
it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration
features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I
remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low
priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on
it?

By the way: there is no package description on many package pages.
Even squeaksource tended to have at least one sentence explaining the
purpose of a package (I think?).

>
> There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting
> effort on it right now. I think it needs some love.
>

Ok, that's very nice, although the number of "Please project owner add
catalog description" and mention of "MetaRepoForPharo20" is a little
discouraging.

One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any
other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does
it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog
packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of
results).

In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is
very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to
a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not
following announcements.

>>
>> Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my
>> OS but anyway...)
>>

There seems to be a support for this in Pharo 3.0: under right click
in an editor you have Paste and Paste... menu items. The latter
displays a thing that I think is supposed to be a list of recently
copied things.

My problem, however, is that this doesn't work with OS clipboard (on
Linux). Ctrl+V and Right click->paste don't work at all with OS
clipboard (they do when copying things inside Pharo). X Window systems
have 2 clipboards: one normal and the other called "X selection" - it
seems that the latter is not checked at all, and normal clipboard is
being accessed by Clipboard>>clipboardText (when Alt+p on "Clipboard
default clipboardText"), but it still doesn't work with Ctrl+V.
Strange.

Anyway, I have a very specific (side-)project in mind and I'm going to
try using Pharo for it, so you can expect quite a bit more questions
from me :)

Best regards,
Piotr Klibert

kilon.alios

Re: Useful tools?

"The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any
kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of
packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I
have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad,
Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a
single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge
improvement. Can this be added?"

I am the creator of Ephestos , its a library that allow Pharo to be used for scripting Blender (free 3d graphics application). Epicea is for managing changes if I remember correctly, Ston is an implementation of JSON in smalltalk , Pillar is a way to create latex files using Pharo its used by most recent pharo documentation like the Updated Pharo By Example. I think adding a tooltip is not enough a better option would have been a panel that offers a detailed description (a paragraph or two of text) together with other technical info .

"2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available

packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some
library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do
much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than
it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration
features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I
remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low
priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on
it?"

Right now Smalltalkhub is pretty much abandonware , this is why I have been recommending to people to move to github . I have been using github for more than 6 month now with pharo and works like a charm and there are other pharo developers that do too. Pharo community just does not have the resources and the man power to solve all these problems with pharo implementations.

"One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any

other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does
it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog
packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of
results)."

I think that can be solved by moving projects to github, there its easier to find news about project you care and new projects. Several blogs also exist that mention new projects etc. Another great source is youtube and vimeo where pharoers including myself have been uploading demos of our projects for years now. Following the mailing lists is a very good idea too.

"In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is

very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to
a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not
following announcements."

Pharo is not a good choice for begineers , noob friendly solutions requires a lot more work than what you would expect, documentation, blogs, websites, video tutorials. Pharo does not have the size of community to provide that but is in a very good road towards that direction. So I am afraid that this wont change any time soon. I tried to make my own contibution into improving the situation other like Stef and Damien and others have done much more and they definitely care but is just too much work for just a few people.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Piotr Klibert <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

nice timing - I returned to Pharo after a couple of months spent
elsewhere and I'm facing the same challenges as Laura. So, a couple of
additional comments and questions from me:

>
> Have you tried to use System -> Settings browser -> Formatter?
>

This setting seems to live under "Refactoring engine" category in the
settings, it is there in vanilla Pharo 3.0 image, but not in the image
downloaded from here:
http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/installing-gtoolkit

Which package is responsible for adding this setting and in which version?

BTW: it seems that Roassal and at least parts of Glamour don't want to
work with bitmap fonts (StrikeFont does not understand
#glyphRendererOn: IIRC) at all, despite bitmap font being the default
(at least on Linux).

>
> Most of them are accessible from the Configuration Browser in Pharo 3, or by
> searching in http://www.smalltalkhub.com/
>

Two questions here:

1. The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any
kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of
packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I
have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad,
Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a
single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge
improvement. Can this be added?

2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available
packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some
library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do
much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than
it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration
features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I
remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low
priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on
it?

By the way: there is no package description on many package pages.
Even squeaksource tended to have at least one sentence explaining the
purpose of a package (I think?).

>
> There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting
> effort on it right now. I think it needs some love.
>

Ok, that's very nice, although the number of "Please project owner add
catalog description" and mention of "MetaRepoForPharo20" is a little
discouraging.

One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any
other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does
it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog
packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of
results).

In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is
very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to
a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not
following announcements.

>>
>> Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my
>> OS but anyway...)
>>

There seems to be a support for this in Pharo 3.0: under right click
in an editor you have Paste and Paste... menu items. The latter
displays a thing that I think is supposed to be a list of recently
copied things.

My problem, however, is that this doesn't work with OS clipboard (on
Linux). Ctrl+V and Right click->paste don't work at all with OS
clipboard (they do when copying things inside Pharo). X Window systems
have 2 clipboards: one normal and the other called "X selection" - it
seems that the latter is not checked at all, and normal clipboard is
being accessed by Clipboard>>clipboardText (when Alt+p on "Clipboard
default clipboardText"), but it still doesn't work with Ctrl+V.
Strange.

Anyway, I have a very specific (side-)project in mind and I'm going to
try using Pharo for it, so you can expect quite a bit more questions
from me :)

Best regards,
Piotr Klibert

stepharo

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by Piotr Klibert

>
> 2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available
> packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some
> library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do
> much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than
> it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration
> features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I
> remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low
> priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on
> it?
>
> By the way: there is no package description on many package pages.
> Even squeaksource tended to have at least one sentence explaining the
> purpose of a package (I think?).
>
>> There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting
>> effort on it right now. I think it needs some love.
>>
> Ok, that's very nice, although the number of "Please project owner add
> catalog description" and mention of "MetaRepoForPharo20" is a little
> discouraging.
>
> One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any
> other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does
> it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog
> packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of
> results).
>
> In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is
> very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to
> a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not
> following announcements.
>
>>> Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my
>>> OS but anyway...)
>>>
> There seems to be a support for this in Pharo 3.0: under right click
> in an editor you have Paste and Paste... menu items. The latter
> displays a thing that I think is supposed to be a list of recently
> copied things.
>
> My problem, however, is that this doesn't work with OS clipboard (on
> Linux). Ctrl+V and Right click->paste don't work at all with OS
> clipboard (they do when copying things inside Pharo). X Window systems
> have 2 clipboards: one normal and the other called "X selection" - it
> seems that the latter is not checked at all, and normal clipboard is
> being accessed by Clipboard>>clipboardText (when Alt+p on "Clipboard
> default clipboardText"), but it still doesn't work with Ctrl+V.
> Strange.
>
> Anyway, I have a very specific (side-)project in mind and I'm going to
> try using Pharo for it, so you can expect quite a bit more questions
> from me :)
>
> Best regards,
> Piotr Klibert
>
>

stepharo

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by laura

We need a catalog of packages.
We started to build such a catalog as a prototype.
Now we are reimplementing everything.

Stef

Le 13/1/15 04:58, Laura Risani a écrit :

Hi all,

What are some tools / plug-ins/ projects / packages / frameworks

you find very useful or you use very frequently for development?

(please for each name it and state it's purpose)

I'm a newcomer to Pharo , so it hasn't to be something rare.

On the side...

I feel curious about how one gets to know about the existence of such resources. Is there any sort of "resources index" (like a wiki page with categories)? Besides books which can't be comprehensive because of their nature. Such an index would be extremely handy in many ways.

Do you agree? Is it plausible, if it doesn't exist, to built it collaboratively?

It is a sad thing that useful tools go unnoticed when they could have solved a problem you faced or eased your work if only you've known about their existence. For what i've read on spread posts i feel like there are many such tools.

I had this experience of useful resource existence ignorance with TilingWindowManager (LaurentLaffont ) and with RBConfigurableFormatter (by the way i can't figure out how to turn it on). Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my OS but anyway...)

Best,

Laura

stepharo

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by Piotr Klibert

> Two questions here:
>
> 1. The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any
> kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of
> packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I
> have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad,
> Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a
> single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge
> improvement. Can this be added?

Yes this is so true. You are 100% right
this is why I started to code a catalog extracted from configurationOf.
https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/job/PharoProjectCatalog/ but it
seems that recent changes broke it.

> 2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available
> packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some
> library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do
> much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than
> it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration
> features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I
> remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low
> priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on
> it?
Yes you are again right. The person developing Smalltalkhub left and
quit Smalltalk against all our expectations.

>
> By the way: there is no package description on many package pages.
> Even squeaksource tended to have at least one sentence explaining the
> purpose of a package (I think?).
>
>> There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting
>> effort on it right now. I think it needs some love.
>>
> Ok, that's very nice, although the number of "Please project owner add
> catalog description" and mention of "MetaRepoForPharo20" is a little
> discouraging.

Yes but if people do not see a value to document how can we do it.

> One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any
> other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does
> it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog
> packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of
> results).
right now this is just a experiment. Two years ago I asked inria to pay
an engineer to help us solving this issue
but they thought that with one engineer he can do everything.

>
> In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is
> very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to
> a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not
> following announcements.
I agree.

>>> Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my
>>> OS but anyway...)
>>>
> There seems to be a support for this in Pharo 3.0: under right click
> in an editor you have Paste and Paste... menu items. The latter
> displays a thing that I think is supposed to be a list of recently
> copied things.
>
> My problem, however, is that this doesn't work with OS clipboard (on
> Linux). Ctrl+V and Right click->paste don't work at all with OS
> clipboard (they do when copying things inside Pharo). X Window systems
> have 2 clipboards: one normal and the other called "X selection" - it
> seems that the latter is not checked at all, and normal clipboard is
> being accessed by Clipboard>>clipboardText (when Alt+p on "Clipboard
> default clipboardText"), but it still doesn't work with Ctrl+V.
> Strange.
>
> Anyway, I have a very specific (side-)project in mind and I'm going to
> try using Pharo for it, so you can expect quite a bit more questions
> from me :)
>
> Best regards,
> Piotr Klibert
>
>

stepharo

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by laura

We need a catalog of packages.
We started to build such a catalog as a prototype.
Now we are reimplementing everything.

Stef

Le 13/1/15 04:58, Laura Risani a écrit :

Hi all,

What are some tools / plug-ins/ projects / packages / frameworks

you find very useful or you use very frequently for development?

(please for each name it and state it's purpose)

I'm a newcomer to Pharo , so it hasn't to be something rare.

On the side...

I feel curious about how one gets to know about the existence of such resources. Is there any sort of "resources index" (like a wiki page with categories)? Besides books which can't be comprehensive because of their nature. Such an index would be extremely handy in many ways.

Do you agree? Is it plausible, if it doesn't exist, to built it collaboratively?

It is a sad thing that useful tools go unnoticed when they could have solved a problem you faced or eased your work if only you've known about their existence. For what i've read on spread posts i feel like there are many such tools.

I had this experience of useful resource existence ignorance with TilingWindowManager (LaurentLaffont ) and with RBConfigurableFormatter (by the way i can't figure out how to turn it on). Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my OS but anyway...)

Best,

Laura

Martin Bähr

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by stepharo

Excerpts from stepharo's message of 2015-01-13 17:13:50 +0100:
> Yes this is so true. You are 100% right
> this is why I started to code a catalog extracted from configurationOf.
> https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/job/PharoProjectCatalog/ but it
> seems that recent changes broke it.
>
> Yes you are again right. The person developing Smalltalkhub left and
> quit Smalltalk against all our expectations.

who is maintaining the server now?
is the code available?

> Yes but if people do not see a value to document how can we do it.

refuse to list packages that are not documented.

> right now this is just a experiment. Two years ago I asked inria to pay
> an engineer to help us solving this issue
> but they thought that with one engineer he can do everything.

woudln't this be a good project for summer of code (of the just now starting
semester of code)?

would you be willing to mentor such a project?

greetings, martin.

--
eKita - the online platform for your entire academic life
--
chief engineer eKita.co
pike programmer pike.lysator.liu.se caudium.net societyserver.org
secretary beijinglug.org
mentor fossasia.org
foresight developer foresightlinux.org realss.com
unix sysadmin
Martin Bähr working in china http://societyserver.org/mbaehr/

Paul DeBruicker

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by laura

Hi Laura,

Laura wrote

Hi all,

What are some tools / plug-ins/ projects / packages / frameworks
you find very useful or you use very frequently for development?
(please for each name it and state it's purpose)
I'm a newcomer to Pharo , so it hasn't to be something rare.

When I was starting I used:

Terse Guide To Squeak: http://squeak.joyful.com/LanguageNotes (describes the syntax and provides a one line example for most of what a person uses on a day to day basis while coding, not so much for reading code/exploring the image)

and

http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-Best-Practice-Patterns-Kent/dp/013476904X

and the mailing lists.

On the side...
I feel curious about how one gets to know about the existence of such
resources. Is there any sort of "resources index" (like a wiki page with
categories)? Besides books which can't be comprehensive because of their
nature. Such an index would be extremely handy in many ways.
Do you agree? Is it plausible, if it doesn't exist, to built it
collaboratively?

I agree 100%. There is a nascent one being created here:

http://smalltalkrenaissance.wordpress.com/resources/

It is a sad thing that useful tools go unnoticed when they could have
solved a problem you faced or eased your work if only you've known about
their existence. For what i've read on spread posts i feel like there are
many such tools.

I had this experience of useful resource existence ignorance with
TilingWindowManager (LaurentLaffont ) and with RBConfigurableFormatter (by
the way i can't figure out how to turn it on). Now i feel like having a
multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my OS but anyway...)

For several unimportant reasons automatic code formatting was removed in Pharo 2.0 and has not been restored to the official images. To get it in Pharo 3 you have to load a slice from the Pharo30 inbox.

The Pharo30Inbox should be in your list of repositories in your Monticello browser. Once youve opened it search for

SLICE-Issue-14387-ressurrect-format-on-accept-and-format-on-display

Load the package in the pane on the right hand side.

Once the slice is loaded open the settings browser from the world menu. Choose the 'Code Browsing' section and click the boxes next to 'Pretty Print' and 'Format code on accept'

Good luck

Paul

Best,
Laura

Paul DeBruicker

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by laura

The other thing I'd add is if you have an area of interest then let us know so people can point you to things relevant to you. There is a lot out there, if somewhat poorly organized.

Laura wrote

Hi all,

What are some tools / plug-ins/ projects / packages / frameworks
you find very useful or you use very frequently for development?
(please for each name it and state it's purpose)
I'm a newcomer to Pharo , so it hasn't to be something rare.

On the side...
I feel curious about how one gets to know about the existence of such
resources. Is there any sort of "resources index" (like a wiki page with
categories)? Besides books which can't be comprehensive because of their
nature. Such an index would be extremely handy in many ways.
Do you agree? Is it plausible, if it doesn't exist, to built it
collaboratively?

It is a sad thing that useful tools go unnoticed when they could have
solved a problem you faced or eased your work if only you've known about
their existence. For what i've read on spread posts i feel like there are
many such tools.

I had this experience of useful resource existence ignorance with
TilingWindowManager (LaurentLaffont ) and with RBConfigurableFormatter (by
the way i can't figure out how to turn it on). Now i feel like having a
multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my OS but anyway...)

Best,
Laura

laura

Re: Useful tools?

i'm afraid i posed the question too broadly to be answerable, so reformulating...

What are some tools you frequently use to ease development which are neither built in the current official distribution nor domain-specific?
(for example i added TilingWindowManager, RBConfigurableFormatter, many shortcuts )

Some Class Browser plug-in? I've tried adding PackageTasksPlugin beacause i found the idea interesting, but it doesn't work properly, a Predebug window keeps showing each time i move to another package.

laura

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by stepharo

How was it implemented? Were you building it as an additional package for the system?
How would it support browsability and discoverability?

I had in mind a wiki-like catalog hosted on the official page composed by:
-A tree of categories (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_categories , it doesn't have to be complete from the start, categories could be added a posteriori when needed)
-A set of tags (nice add, but prescindible)
-For each included package, a page specifying a set of predefined fields (description/purpose, owners contact, links to documentation if available ).

Those familliar with a package could submit it's fileds information, and a rotating group of volunteers could handle its approval and edting a new page for it. Or should anyone be able to edit?

I think hosting it in the official page is best because it would be indexable by any web search engine , unrestrictedly visible and could be exported by other tools.

abergel

Re: Useful tools?

Looks like to be a spam…

Alexandre

--
_,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:
Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu
^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.

On Jan 15, 2015, at 1:57 PM, laura <[hidden email]> wrote:

How was it implemented? Were you building it as an additional package for the
system?
How would it support browsability and discoverability?

I had in mind a wiki-like catalog hosted on the official page composed by:
-A tree of categories (like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_categories , it doesn't have
to be complete from the start, categories could be added a posteriori when
needed)
-A set of tags (nice add, but prescindible)
-For each included package, a page specifying a set of predefined fields
(description/purpose, owners contact, links to documentation if available ).

Those familliar with a package could submit it's fileds information, and a
rotating group of volunteers could handle its approval and edting a new page
for it. Or should anyone be able to edit?

I think hosting it in the official page is best because it would be
indexable by any web search engine , unrestrictedly visible and could be
exported by other tools.

--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Useful-tools-tp4799187p4799760.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Tim Mackinnon

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by laura

Laura - not sure if this fits your bill, but I really find that PharoLauncher is handy - it lets you easily download new Smalltalk images (maybe to track new features in Moose, or Pharo 4.0) - before using it I had things lying around where I had forgotten what they were for. This helped me put a bit of structure around things and try out new stuff when I saw it mentioned on these mailing lists.

Its on: http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo/PharoLauncher

(It’s also a nice example of how to write a shrink wrapped Pharo application that looks quite slick)

Tim

On 15 Jan 2015, at 03:58, laura <[hidden email]> wrote:

i'm afraid i posed the question too broadly to be answerable, so
reformulating...

What are some tools you frequently use to ease development which are neither
built in the current official distribution nor domain-specific?
(for example i added TilingWindowManager, RBConfigurableFormatter, many
shortcuts )

Some Class Browser plug-in? I've tried adding PackageTasksPlugin beacause i
found the idea interesting, but it doesn't work properly, a Predebug window
keeps showing each time i move to another package.

--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Useful-tools-tp4799187p4799636.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

laura

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by hernanmd

Hi hernanmd,

I found the list of (some of) the packages you use to be an interesting peek view of an expert's toolkit. Some i knew, some i didn't and learned about.

>There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting effort on it right now. I think it needs some love.
It's a nice initiative, but just a few packages have descriptions.

>Have you tried to use System -> Settings browser -> Formatter?
There is no on/off switch there for the Formatter on the System current's version. But the solution was pointed out on a post after yours.

> Well, it depends really what's your domain.
> There are many tools in Smalltalk! For application development sometimes you just find them browsing Google, there are old packages with lot of features you may apply. But check carefully because many of them were written for a particular domain or use case.
I liked this piece of advice, seems to be an essential point for understanding and dealing with packages. I will keep it in mind.

Thanks for sharing,
Laura

laura

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by Paul DeBruicker

Hi Paul ,

>Terse Guide To Squeak: http://squeak.joyful.com/LanguageNotes
Too terse for me. I like better the documentation on the official webpage, i like it a lot because its explanations are through and motivated.

> Smalltalk-Best-Practice-Patterns-Kent/dp/013476904X
I knew it because of the official webpage. Excellent book.

>For several unimportant reasons automatic code formatting was removed in Pharo 2.0 and has not been restored to the official images. To get it in Pharo 3 ...
It worked fine.

Love,
Laura

laura

Re: Useful tools?

In reply to this post by Tim Mackinnon

Hi Tim,
Fits excellently! Didn't knew about it, great idea.
Thanks for putting me just one-click away from it ;)