Alan wrote:

> objects handled correctly already carry their important behaviors
> with them and thus don't need to be interpreted by a "browser".
> ... distributes everything except how the user's screen is allocated.
> One's "browser" has now shrunk to almost nothing except the management
> of screen real estate.

an underTheHood-ignorant question: why does squeak itself not take this
approach? More precisely: why not free the objects from the 'image',
allowing them to live anywhere that is reachable by url/pointer and have a
separate 'browsing' object to achieve the effect of the current image?

[this would trvially address the original poster's question of how to
produce 'independent apps'! also, as a side effect this might allow the
'extreme multiplatform transportability' you mentionned, without
compromising integration as much as it is now]

[i can imagine the historical reasons why that approach was not taken (if
st was developped by and large as its own OS/desktop). but those reasons do
not hold anymore in a world where just about every squeak is embedded in a
larger system (inside an OS/desktop or more generally inside infoBahn)]