On 3/9/14 09:43, J.F. Rick wrote:
Hi everyone,
I'm writing for two reasons. First, I wanted to let people know that I
haven't disappeared. I'm just having to take a break as I finish up
with my current academic post. As I am no longer going to be there,
Pharo contributions don't help the department. So, I can't justify
devoting any time to Pharo. But, I'm still interested in Athens,
multitouch support, and Pharo for beginners. In October, I move back
to Atlanta and will start a company. At that point, I aim to be back,
though I may concentrate a bit more on server technology (full version
of newest QRCode specifications half way done).
Thanks for the update.
Second, I wanted to mention a slight annoyance and suggest a solution.
Background: I taught a class on introduction / intermediate
programming in Pharo the last few years. One thing I try to teach my
students is to use proper indention for their code. Unlike Python
(great syntax for a first language), you do not need to indent in
Smalltalk for code to work properly so students don't have to properly
use indention to organize their code. For tiny bits of code (as is
required in introductory programming), indention is not that important
but it gets more important as they advance. Even my better students
often used bad indention practices, though I emphasized it in class
and all sample code I gave them was properly indented. In class, I
often solved problems and demonstrated code. So that students could
see what I typed, I increased the size of the font (24pt standard
font). Though the font increased, the tab spacing remained the same.
So, when I indented with one tab, it looked much smaller than a tab
would have looked on their 10pt code editor. I saw people using spaces
to indent code, which I never talked about. My guess is that they were
trying to replicate the amount of space that my code was indented.
They saw that a tab looked too big and used spaces. A simple solution
is for tab spacing in code panes to increase proportionally with the
font size.
Yes it should.
I feel like suggesting that as an improvement for Pharo 4. Does that
seem reasonable? Are there arguments against it?
No this should be like you mention.
Cheers,
Jeff
--
Jochen "Jeff" Rick, Ph.D.
http://www.je77.com/
Skype ID: jochenrick
