"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 <piotr.klib...@10clouds.com> 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 > >
