17 Mar 2004

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 18:24:34 -0700

More work on completing the OB development tools. I've got the VersionsBrowser working, created a method hierarchy browser and added support for class variables to the 'chase variables' browser, as it's now called.

I've also put some work into making the package browsers much more transparent in terms of user interface. They now hide the fact that PackageInfo relies on category naming conventions as much as possible, and just "do the right thing," by translating category names as needed. They also handle extension methods properly now, which is quite pleasant.

Still needed are better ways of moving classes and methods between packages, but I think a combination of menu commands and drag and drop should handle it nicely.

preview

13 Mar 2004

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 01:02:08 -0700

I'm going to start using this space to post notes on my day-to-day work on OmniBrowser.

Since the last release I've been working on adding bits of missing functionality to bring OmniBrowser closer to feature parity with the standard Browser. I've got button panel that works more or less like the optionalButtons pane in a standard browser, except that the buttons are built from actions and change depending on what node is selected. It works nicely in the file browser, but the contantly changing buttons are a bit distracting in the code browsers, so I'm thinking of making a static button bar as well, to better mimic what we have now.

I've also done a 'chase ivars' browser that shows the ivars in the class, the methods that access them, and the senders of those selectors, and their senders, ad infinitum. I think it's pretty cool, even if it does take some getting used to. Just to be conservative, I'll probably do a regular 'browse ivar access' action and browser before the next release.

Right now I'm working on a VersionsBrowser. This turns out to be surprisingly involved, as the existing versions browser uses some fairly convoluted code to trawl through the changes and sources files. I've rigged up a test case with some dummy source files and next I'm going to wrap up all that parsing code in an OBChangeLog class so that method nodes, for example, won't have do know about the details.

Some of this work should probably be folded back into the KCP, and I'm keeping a list of "needed refactorings" that I'll tackle at some point.

As always, the bleeding edge version of OB is available here.

Squeak People diary for cwp

17 Mar 2004

13 Mar 2004