HiYa andEnhancesments

[stevemessamore]

Good to see the forum! A good idea.
A silly question, Will there be any enhancements to the IDE such as "Intellisense" for us lazy (and poor memory) types?

[Eric Clayberg]

A silly question, Will there be any enhancements to the IDE such as "Intellisense" for us lazy (and poor memory) types?

What did you have in mind?

VA Smalltalk v7.0 already has a number of features like that via its inclusion of VA Assist (like automatic & manual spelling correction, abbreviation expansion, popup senders & implementors, etc.).

[marten]

A silly question, Will there be any enhancements to the IDE such as "Intellisense" for us lazy (and poor memory) types?

What did you have in mind?

VA Smalltalk v7.0 already has a number of features like that via its inclusion of VA Assist (like automatic & manual spelling correction, abbreviation expansion, popup senders & implementors, etc.).

After doing development with VS2005 I would like to see that too in Smalltalk: Intellisense (show us all possible members (methods) I can enter at the moment) - but of course, this is far more difficult, because the compiler/parser does not know anything about (this would of course change, if one could do annotations to parameters, local variables, giving hints about classes or interfaces ...).

I actually have found this problem (missing Intellisense) very annoying now in Smalltalk - what is the fastest way to get around this ? When one wants to get the information Intellisense offers, one needs to have a hierarchical browser on that specific class (because one wants to get the whole protocol (or interface ) of that specific class.

That means: additional window, clicking here and there and then do a copy of that method name, close a window and paste the method name into the actual method browser. But even VisualWorks has nothing like this - perhaps AutoComplete parcel comes closes to this.

Thinking about what is possible in Smalltalk with interfaces and annotations world could be very wonderful. But VS2005 has no culture in this area (browsing): in VS2005 it is stupid to show only the methods (private and public) in alphabetic order - here additional information could be helpful, when using method categories (a structure VS is missing). Also it is not very nice to show all memeber (attributes, methods, properties, events) at once.

Just some remarks on this problems ...

[jpelrine]

I think that VA Assist is great, and it's always been sufficient for my needs, but FWIW, Tim Mackinnon (former OTI employee and VAST developer) has published an Intellisense-type add-on for Dolphin that's quite nice.

http://www.pobox.com/~timm/dolphin.html

Cheers,
Joseph

[Eric Clayberg]

I think that VA Assist is great, and it's always been sufficient for my needs, but FWIW, Tim Mackinnon (former OTI employee and VAST developer) has published an Intellisense-type add-on for Dolphin that's quite nice.

Any chance he would like to port it to VAST?

[stevemessamore]

Hi All, I was away for a couple of days, but yes Eric, the Dolphin Intellisense is a nice feature and does help give a "modern" feel to working in the IDE. I'll check on a port to VA7. Some of the other features that are part of the base Dolphin are handy as well and what I had in mind. The "Idea Space" where one can collect open windows in a single spot.

[jpelrine]

I think that VA Assist is great, and it's always been sufficient for my needs, but FWIW, Tim Mackinnon (former OTI employee and VAST developer) has published an Intellisense-type add-on for Dolphin that's quite nice.

Any chance he would like to port it to VAST?

I'll check with Tim. Since he borrowed some code for it from me, he also probably won't mind if I port it myself ...

Cheers
Joseph

[Eric Clayberg]

I'll check with Tim. Since he borrowed some code for it from me, he also probably won't mind if I port it myself ...

Go for it!

[jpelrine]

I'll check with Tim. Since he borrowed some code for it from me, he also probably won't mind if I port it myself ...

Go for it!

It seems that Tim's OK with it, so as soon as I finish up the first release of my newest goodie (Hint: check out http://www.metaprog.com/Toothpick), I'll get to work on it.

Cheers
Joseph