> What do you mean about all existing menus in the image? Right now, the > default Spotter searches for the top level entries in the World menu and > then lets you dive if you want. It can also be made easily to search for > all menu entries from the World menu. Is that what you have in mind? >
At that moment i thought of searching on all existing menu entries, for example if Spotter-search for "Browse" menu-category results will include "Browse scoped" (an entry of a menu you get for classes on the ClassBrowser). Yet at this moment i'm not sure of how useful it could be. > In this mail alone you list 4 different search tools: Finder, > MessageBrowser, Spotlight, Search in Nautilus. Each of these behaves > radically different without much of an added value. > > The whole philosophy of Smalltalk revolves around a minimal and uniform > model that can be used to express elegantly any action. For example, > Smalltalk has a simple syntax, and yet you can explain with that simple > syntax all things for which other languages require lots of hardcoded > constructs. The same rigor should be applied to the user interface. With > Spotter we strive to reach such a simple model that can be infinitely > moldable to fit custom needs. > > Now, besides elegance, if any, what else is there? Given that search is > such a pervasive action, before I start anything I first want to find an > entry point. That can be a method, a class, a file, or whatever other > object. To this end, first people think of what tool to use and then of how > to find the interesting object inside that tool. With Spotter we want to > eliminate the first step: we just open Spotter and start searching for what > we want. It's not quite there, but I think it is amazingly close to this > goal. > > I liked a lot these paragraphs in theirself and also as a motivation for Spotter. 2) Not having the regular features of a window that are useful depending on >> the case, for shortcuting i would like volatile but for browsing results i >> could depending on the case prefer persistency . >> > > Certainly. The current solution focuses on search. Creating a persistent > list of objects is still a work in progress but it is out of scope at the > moment. > > If at the method GTSpotterGlobalShortcut>>openGlobalSpotter one changes #openInWorld by #openInWindow , one gets the persistent behavior (it also includes the preview if opened). So now i can open a volatile or persistent Spotter, i'm going to have a keycombination for each one. In addition i get all the regular window behavior i in some cases want. This makes me really happy :) Only one little keybordian issue, Cmd+w doesn't close the window as usual, the same happens with GTPlayground. It would be nice if these come implemented so one doesn't have to add them. > This already works. As explained before, something like: > d #i > > will give you only the implementors of "d". So, # will search for the name > of the category. This feature is not yet complete in that it does not > highlight properly the results, but could you try to see if this fits what > you have in mind? > I've just read about that, and also the last bit on custom categories on the blog. So now i will define a category for classes+selectors and map a keycombination to open a volatile Spotter on ti, and remove the 5 results limit (how do i do this?). This gives me my wanted "selector/class shortcut" Spotlight provided me, improving the annoying deficiency Spotlight has of showing no-longer defined names (i asked about it in a recent mail to the list). Having a shortcut (Cmd+Shift+ArrowUp/ArrowDown) to jump through categories, then why to limit the number of results in each category to 5? Why not to show them all to avoid the need of going into the category? > Did you try compiling the method that I sent in the previous mail > (basically just copy paste that method in the GTSpotter class)? It should > provide the behavior of Spotlight. Please try and let me know if it works > for you. > > Yes, it works at some degree. I face this issue, if i type 'openIn' i get only 1/1 selector #openeningDelimiters, and only if i continue to type 'openInW' i get 5/28 selectors. Also at some point i started to get an #inform: msg saying "WorldState interCyclePause failed". So additions i would like to see built by default Cmd+w to close on GTSpotter and GTPlayground. Remove/know-how-to remove the 5 limit on results. Selectors category. Font size configured at SystemBrowser to have effect on GTSpotter both on search results and preview. To summarize i love Spotter and it will be the tool i use the most (in number of openings). Love, Laura
