I can understand Lauras point. I used spotlight quite a lot for searching messages and classes, even if I know the exact name of the message or class, so I don't use it only for "searching" but as an interface to quickly open a new Browser or MessageList.
There are some minor differences that actually make a big difference, if you are used to it, more below. BUT and this is a big "but" and an advantage for spotter 1. Spotlight does not find all items and even if you type in a the exact class name that exists, the first entries spotlight shows, may only include that name. (Searching and opening a browser for String or Morph for example) 2. even if I miss spotlight, the power of spotter (searching everything, extensibility and search in the resultlist) outweigh this for me. 2015-02-07 23:38 GMT+01:00 Tudor Girba <tu...@tudorgirba.com>: > Hi, > > > >> In contrast, from the perspective of that need, Spotter >> -Doesn't search "names" (class names/selectors) but implementations, >> overlaping the two actions of the need (when i olny hava a clue and i'm not >> sure of the name i'm interesed into, i don't care for the list of >> implementations, is obstrusive "garbage"). Forcing me to unnecessarily >> think how to do what i want to do. In addition i find it hard to think >> about the tool because i can't figure out a statement of purpose for it, >> perhaps "global search for a name", but i'm not sure of "global" because it >> doesn't do source code. >> > -Shows me "garbage" i have to mentally filter (world menu, packages, >> pragmas, ... ). >> > > I think you are misinterpreting the goal of Spotter. It is meant to > provide a uniform interface to search all sorts of objects that you see > interesting, and it even offers a cheap way to tweak its behavior to your > needs. Here is a post that describes it in more details: > http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/introducing-gtspotter/ > This is not quite fair :) She said, for her spotlight is more useful, you asked for details, she said explained it and your conclusion is " you misinterpeting the goal of spotter" :) The "minor" differences: - most of the time I am searching for classes and message, I do not use scripts and rarely search for files. often, I know what kind of thing I am searching, messages for example, I type in "transform" because I search for a message that starts with that word. - spotlight shows messages with the word "transform" - spotter shows classes with the world "Transform", packages with the word "Transform" and than a list of 5 method names. - spotlight displays just the message name - spotter shows ClassName>>#messagename ( <- this is more difficult to read because the result entries starting with an unrelated word, the class name) searching for implementors, I often use the search result afterwards. - spotlight opens a MessageList - with spotter I can only open a Browser for one implementor. Again, the above points are not arguments for spotlight over spotter, they just explain why I am more used to the way spotlight works for the class and method search - I do. nicolai