|
|
|
|
|
|
by philippeback
2697 days ago
|
|
|
As a keyboard freak and vim user, I can relate. As a Pharo contributor, well, there is indeed some clicking involved but not as much as you may think. Keybindings are okayish at this point but can use some more love indeed. But this is not related to the core of Pharo but to the tooling that can be improved on some aspects (and this is moving forward actually). If a user is not able to use a mouse, well, maybe the user can have a CI that integrates all of the code written in Tonel format and pushed to a git repo. Can work, Tonel format is pretty readable and usable from a command line. There are ways to use Pharo as a "normal" language. But then, what's the point. |
|
|
I see the new framework for keyboard shortcuts was completed. There are many shortcuts to customize in preferences now. Congrats! :)
Still, the shortcuts by default are totally different than the usual. Is it possible to make for example readline (bash) emulation with the new keyboard shortcuts code? Where would you start if you wanted to do this?
> As a Pharo contributor
I played with 7.0 yesterday, I have a few questions, maybe you'll be able to help me:
- I work on a Linux with high DPI display. I increased the font size of everything to extra large and set scaling factor, which helped, but the cursor is still tiny and almost invisible. I tried reading the code in HandMorph and Cursor, however, the beCursor method which handles displaying of hardwareCursor (I assume) is a primitive. I downloaded the opensmalltalk-vm and after a short fight with it succeeded in running its image. I found primitiveBeCursor method, but it calls C-level function called something like `ioSetCursorSomething` - and I couldn't locate that function. Do you know where it is?
- when you set scaling factor and font size, it's not universally recognized. The menu at the top of screen didn't change its font size, the lists with columns (in preferences, in debugger, etc.) have fixed column-size which truncates most entries (and splitter for changing the width of a column is barely visible), some elements start overlapping (tabs in the browser obscure the row with instance/class side, flat/hier and so on), the windows seem to have hard-coded initial extents which ignore font-size and scaling. To be honest it's barely usable right now for me, to the point that, to play with it, I had to create a dummy Xvnc display and run Pharo there, then run x11vnc on the Pharo window id and finally connect to it via VNC client, scaled the whole thing up. It's a bit nightmarish an experience :) Is there any work towards making it better in progress?
- related to the above, is it possible to set the initial extent of the Pharo window (the top-most, OS-level one, I mean) on the command-line? There's a switch for starting in iconified state or fullscreen, but I didn't find one like `size` or `geometry`.
- What are class "extensions"? Are they simply traits, or is it something new? Is it documented somewhere?
---
I see lots of great progress on all fronts, but Pharo remains rough around the edges. The discoverability of the details is great, but the bigger picture - an overview of all the toolkits, for example, or a succinct description of architecture - is very hard to piece together. The new package manager interface finally displays a bit of description for each (this wasn't the case for a long time), but many packages have no description. Coupled with package names being rather hermetic this makes for a frustrating experience. I'm a rather persistent kind of guy and so I stuck with Pharo despite all that, but I imagine many other devs wouldn't care to do this, unfortunately.