[Newbies] Feedback: Using Output as the Next Input

[Dan Norton]

Dumb questions can have uses after all. Thank you Hannes and Ralph for your thoughtful 
responses. You must have been digging into the archives - my original post was nearly a 
year ago.

Perhaps it is time to say what I chose to do. Design of Secret Santa was driven by:
   1. A desire for simplicity
   2. Relatively infrequent use (annual)

Input is a text file listing the names of participants. A pair of names on the same line denotes 
a couple. Output consists of the result of drawing names, compiled as a class method. 
Method names are serialized: drawn2012, drawn2013, ...

The Transcript shows the latest drawing, as a Dictionary, which is compiled. Below that in the 
Transcript are the statistics (iterations, rule violations). The image must be saved.

I would appreciate any thoughts on application delivery. The above is a very crude, if not 
non-existent, way to deliver an app. Use of external files for output would improve things a 
little. Isn't it possible to do better than this for a Smalltalk app? What if the user is not a fan of 
computers?

 - Dan