To get basic help on a token or an expression in any window, select it, right-click, and select explain. This displays a popup containing help text. If the selection is a literal value, its type is displayed. If the selection is a class name, its category is displayed. If the select is a message, a list of classes that implement it are displayed.
The World menu contains a Help submenu which contains the following:
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About this System …
This was described at the end of the previous section.
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Terse Guide to Cuis
An excellent source of categorized code snippets for performing a large number of common tasks.
If the prompt “The Terse Guide is not loaded. Would you like me to load it for you now?” appears, select “Yes”. The following window will open.
Click a topic to see example code. Select code and “Do it” or “Print it” to experiment. Modify the code as desired. Changes will not be saved, so it is safe to experiment.
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Class Comment Browser
The first time this is selected, a message will be displayed stating that it requires cloning the Cuis-Smalltalk-Tools repository. After this is done, selecting this menu item again will ask for permission to install the tool. After this is done, selecting this menu item yet again will open a Class Comment Browser.
The left pane displays an alphabetical list of class names where each name is preceded by a disclosure triangle. Clicking a class name displays its first comment in the right pane. Clicking a disclosure triangle expands the class to show a numbered list of comments found in the source code for the class. Clicking any of those displays the comment text in the right pane.
It’s probably more useful to open a System Browser, find a class of interest, an view the comments there.
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Code management in Cuis
Selecting this opens a window titled “Managing your code in Cuis”. That offers the following advice:
Code that is not part of the Cuis Core image itself, like applications, frameworks and libraries, should be stored in Packages. New code that are meant as patches, fixes or additions; that could eventually become part of Cuis itself, is not part of any Package, and is therefore automatically stored in ChangeSets.
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Using GitHub to host Cuis packages
This opens a window containing text that explains the recommended development process for managing external packages in Cuis Smalltalk using GitHub.
For more detail see Making a Simple Package for Cuis.
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Editor keyboard shortcuts
This opens a window containing text that describes all the keyboard shortcuts supported by Cuis Smalltalk for editing text, including code.
For example, to rename a parameter or local variable in a method, select it, press cmd-shift-r, and enter the new name.
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Useful Expressions
This opens a window that contains useful expressions. To execute one, select it and “Do it” or “Print it”.
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VM Statistics
This opens a window that displays VM Statistics including uptime, memory usage, and garbage collection (GC) statistics.
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Space Left
This opens a popup that displays remaining memory. It may only be useful for debugging issues with running out of memory.
Documentation
Smalltalk documentation often uses the notation Foo>>bar to indicate that
bar is an instance method in the class Foo.
The notation Foo class>>bar indicates that
bar is a class method in the class Foo.
In addition to its use in documentation, >> is also a binary method
available to all classes.
The Behavior class is a superclass of all classes.
It defines the instance method >> which takes a Symbol selector and
returns the CompiledMethod instance that handles the selector.
Finding Methods
To find methods that contain given text, enter the text in Workspace, select it, right-click, and select “Method Source with it”.