New inspector
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
There is a new inspector tool in the UI which can edit slot values now.
It is useful for debugging, as well as prototyping – you can build a very ad-hoc GUI this way.
For example, consider the following interactive session:
We set variable to a hashtable holding prices of various foodstuffs,
then we define a word which takes a list of foodstuffs, computes the
total cost, and prints it.
Unfortunately, the price of sausages has gone up, so the prices have to
be adjusted accordingly. No problem. First, print out the hashtable
holding the prices; when printed it becomes a clickable presentation:
Now, click it, which opens the inspector tool. The ellipsis to the left
of every slot is a button which opens the slot editor:
Here we are in the slot editor:
After clicking ‘Commit’ and returning to the listener, we see the price
has gone up:
The inspector can edit sequences, tuples, strings… you can also input
complex structures (the slot editor text area is parsed in the parser,
it can take a lot more than just numbers).
One limitation is that so far you cannot add new elements to objects which allow that (eg, hashtables, resizable sequences). However the listener-based inspector supports this feature now, and it won’t be long before the UI inspector does too.
Mmmmm, hot dogs.