Second Enhancement to FileList


Review and Plan for next steps

So far we've tailored our Squeak environment, used FileList to peruse files on a remote site, used SUnit, and extended FileList to make it easier to copy file names. We also learned how to capture our edits in Squeak into a change set that can be shared with other Squeak developers.

But we also saw how inefficient the copying of files between the remote and local systems remains. Let's see what can be done about making it easier to copy files from a remote system to our local one.

We will take a look back at the FileList getting used to access a remote file and explore what we would like to accomplish to get the file easily copied to the local workstation.

We should also use SUnit to write the test first, before we write any new code in FileList.

Since we know we will be spending some time browsing code in Squeak, now would be a good time to deal with fixing those colors used when browsing source code when "colorPrint" is enabled. Since you already know about change sets, we should now install some change sets adding new features we want. I've already written a solution to the colors problem and published the code to the WWW. We can use Squeak directly to fetch that code and install it. The package will ask you to confirm a prerequisite load automatically.

You can skip over this section if you do not want to make other cosmetic changes to your Squeak environment. Skip ahead to the next page of second FileList enhancement.

Adding more features using Squeak Map

I wrote a tool that enhances Squeak by allowing you to customize the color pretty print parameters in code panes. Open up the Package Loader from the "open..." menu. Select the package named "Edit Text Colors" and install it.

The code we just installed adds a new editor to Squeak that allows us to modify the colors and text attributes of our source code when browsing. To open the new editor select it from the "appearance..." menu.


A new window opens. I changed the values and colors this way:

Close the editor.

Additional environment and tool tweaks

Using Squeak Map you may choose to install these additional enhancements.

On my personal web site I also have a page dedicated to sharing my Squeak enhancements. Often, I update contents on that web site before I publish to Squeak Map (if ever). The web site is here. You can download change sets from the web site and install them via the FileList, as described earlier in this example. Enhancements I often install in my own development image that I also know work in Squeak 3.5 include:
For most of the enhancements identified in the above lists, there are Preferences that control parameters. Look through the Preferences panel to see how you would like to adjust them. Each new preference, that came from one of these enhancements, has balloon help information defined. So if you want to know what a preference does, move the pointer over the specific preference box you are curious about and a balloon help will appear with a description. Close any open windows before you continue.

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