[Newbies] Squeak Guilt

[tjohnson at iwu.edu]

> You've hit on a lot of my exact reasons.  When I make an application,
> it would be nice to be able to show it to my friends, and there is
> zero chance that they will actually install squeak.  I can get away
> with this for some things by using the webbased squeak app... but not
> for desktop things. I like writing casual games and the AI applicable
> to them.

The fact that Sophie is available as a self-contained app based on Squeak (and MIT's Scratch?
) shows that with the correct dedication, and by following the correct procedures, one can 
package up an app using Squeak and have it be mass-consumed.

I worried about what you say too, but now what I'm working on can be entirely web-based so 
Squeak only needs to exist on the back-end.  So that is lucky.

> I could live with Squeak being an island if I were able to use it for
> my day-to-day internet use. From what I've seen, squeak doesn't even
> have a usable webbrowser... I  can't read the newbies list from inside
> squeak, nor can I search the web for documentation and such.

At one time, Celeste was a much-used email client from within Squeak, and people browsed 
the web from within Squeak using Scamper.  I have experimented with both in the past.  I 
found Scamper was great for viewing the Swiki.  Celeste was only POP at the time, IIRC, which 
kind of drove me away.  

Over time, unfortunately, bit-rot takes these at one time completely functional applications 
and gives them subtle bugs.  Keyboard focus problems, other keyboard command problems.  
It also seems Morph changes really have wide-ranging effects.  

> So, I can't really run outside of squeak, and I can't really run
> inside of squeak, but have this weird hybrid.

I think the goal at one time *was* to use Squeak as an entirely self-contained system, but it 
seems that the focus of today's leadership team is to make it a development platform only.  
That is kind of sad to me, because my initial thrill at Squeak was by looking at it as a 
platform.  Unfortunately, like I said above, many of its applications are unstable and 
unmaintained in today's images.

If you are curious, pick up a 3.6 or 3.2 image and see what it used to be like...

- TimJ