Hi Sven,

Exactly! :)

To be relevant, we had to show how it solves existing use cases (plus a bit more :)). Next we will focus on objects that are less "code". The hard part of actually getting the interface smooth and performant was kind of done. It's play time now :).

As I noted in the post, we already have some 30 extensions for handling these cases. This was actually easy. The menu is an example of how we used this concept to approach a problem that is classically dealt with in a completely different way.

There are a couple of things we did not show yet. For example, we already have a simple implementation of how to make a Moose model completely browseable through this interface.

But, as with the inspector, the coolest thing is that if someone has a specific need, it is even simpler than with the inspector to hook that need in the system and make it searchable. Your list is definitely exciting, and I am hoping that people will start playing a bit and discover things we otherwise would not consider. It should be easier than with the inspector (because there are less things to specify, hence less variation).

And wait to see what happens when we start to combine this interface with others. For example, the interesting thing about being able to search a menu is that you can actually open any menu with a spotter, which essentially has the potential of changing the way we deal with contextual actions (all through keybindings without shortcuts). I am quite sure we are just scratching the surface of what is possible.

So, let's play together :).

Cheers,
Doru


On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 10:35 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
Doru,

One of the things/aspects that I miss a bit is the 'objects' part. In your overall description/presentation you talk about 'objects', but right now I would say it are mainly 'code objects' like classes & methods and friends, and some IDE artefacts, like menus.

What about arbitrary (user) objects ?

Literal constants, like 123, 'some string' ?
Globals like the Transcript ?
Singletons accessible by class side accessors, like announcers ?
An evaluation functionality, just type an expression ?
Examples ?
The clipboard (contents), open windows, processes, ...

Anyway, I am sure you get the idea ;-)

Sven

> On 07 Dec 2014, at 19:07, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Sven,
>
> Thanks for the kind words. Indeed, having the current selection is one of the things we should keep in mind. For that we need to go to the next step and integrate the interface in the overall environment. This will certainly come.
>
> Cheers,
> Doru
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 6:57 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
>
> > On 07 Dec 2014, at 14:14, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:
> >
> > Alex Syrel, Andrei Chis and I are happy to announce a new addition to the Glamorous Toolkit:
> > GTSpotter, a novel interface for spotting objects.
>
> Excellent work, all around. Congratulations to the team. Thank you for pushing things like this, for thinking differently.
>
> Yes, I want this in Pharo 4 too, ASAP (especially since the main shortcut is different from the old one, cmd+Enter vs. shift+Enter).
>
> The presentation is again very well done too: excellent article, super movie. You are putting the bar very high for the rest of us ;-)
>
> A suggestion/idea: would it be possible to take the current selection anywhere and feed it into Spotter ? That way there would be very good way to make it replace all the other shortcuts: you would get implementers, senders, references almost for free.
>
> Sven
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> www.tudorgirba.com
>
> "Every thing has its own flow"





--
www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"