On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am confused about the GTInspector State tab. What is its definition ? > > I would say that it shows the raw, fundamental, implementation form of the > object, in essence what EyeBasicInspector showed. And that additional tabs > offer alternative, more user friendly views. > Yes, I think that this should be the main purpose of the State tab. (behave like EyeBasicInspector). The only difference right now is in the way collections are handled. Collections should have an items views. Now sure why it is missing for String and ByteArray. Maybe we thought it's not really needed. As we display the elements of a collection in a dedicated tab, then indeed, the State view only shows self, which is not so nice. Still for objects like Integer, Float, CompiledMethod I'd like that the State view contains some meta variables. I'd prefer this rather to switching between two tabs. Now I also get your point about seeing only the raw fundamental data of an object. We could be to improve the state view to add both all the variable + some meta variables and make it clear what are the meta variables. For example display all the meta variables at the top on a slightly different background. We definitely need to iterate more :) Cheers, Andrei > > Why then does it not show all variable content and only named variables ? > > Try inspecting a [Byte]String or [Byte]Array. The State view is useless, > it just shows self. Some of these have an items view, but not all. > > How can I inspect an individual character of a String ? Or an individual > byte ? > > Consider a Float. The State view should show the two (meaningless) slots > because that is how Floats are (currently) implemented, and then another > tab should show the sign, mantissa, exponent view. > > In the Eye inspectors we also confused these two aspects in a single view, > which is wrong in hindsight, IMHO. It should be crystal clear for a user > whether a slot is real or an alternative view of describing the same thing. > > I could propose changes or a slice, but I think we should agree on the > definition of 'State' first. > > Sven > > >
