From: Caleb Clausen <vikkous@...>
Date: 2010-04-24T00:11:30+09:00
Subject: Re: DrX, an object inspector

On 4/22/10, Mooffie n/a <mooffie@gmail.com> wrote:
> Caleb Clausen wrote:
>>
>> The size and style drop-down boxes don't work for me if I
>> close and then re-open drx a second time from within irb.
>
> Thanks for reminding me of this Ruby/Tk bug. I think I'll have a
> workaround soon. It only happens for Tk 8.4, not for Tk 8.5.

I thought I had 8.5 installed... apparently not. Thanks for the
instructions for fixing it.

>> Is there any chance you'll extend this to show an object's
>> contents instead of or in addition to it's class/type?
>
> Yes, there's a chance. I haven't yet an idea how this feature will
> look/behave.

I can give you some ideas, if you want. I realize that since the
contents of an object are potentially a much larger graph, that makes
displaying them rather more challenging.

>> You should consider using the EDITOR or VISUAL environment
>> variables instead of DRX_EDITOR_COMMAND.
>
> There are several reasons for not doing this. Jakub has explained. I
> certainly don't want to use my EDITOR: mine works only in the console,
> and gedit starts up faster.

EDITOR is supposed to be a console-only program. You'd have to launch
a new xterm (or whatever) and run EDITOR in that. If the user wants a
gui program, he should place it in VISUAL. Jakub's scheme of looking
in DRX_EDITOR_COMMAND, then VISUAL, then perhaps EDITOR is probably
the best.

But really this was a very minor quibble, so feel free to ignore me.

> (Besides, I don't recommend people to use this environment variable
> anyway. They should put all their configuration in ~/.drxrc: it's much
> better because they can backup it, copy to other systems, etc. This
> DRX_EDITOR_COMMAND exists only because DrX didn't have ~/.drxrc when I
> wrote that section in the user manual.)

And that's quite appropriate, of course. But it brings up another
point; since this is a gui program, shouldn't it have gui dialog(s)
for setting all those configuration items? That's always nice to have,
but again of minor importance at best.