Hi all

>From: Raymond Cote <rgacote at AppropriateSolutions.com>
>> Enter the 'killer app.' I was recently referenced to a product called Zope
><http://www.zope.org>, a freeware Application Server that implements, among
>other things, a protocol called WebDAV <http://www.webdav.org> for
>Distributed Authoring and Versioning. Turns out the product is written
>completely in Python and, to use it fully you need to learn Python.
>
>Squeak needs to highlight the swiki stuff. Specifically, what I would like
>is instructions on how to get a swiki web server running in Squeak on my
>laptop. I gave up trying to figure this out a while ago.

The PWS which comes with Squeak is a cool piece of technology, and the new
rewrite looks as if it will be even better.  However, I think it's a
mistake to see Squeak in the same light as languages like PERL and (to a
lesser extent) Python which are focussed on the manipulation of text.
Server side stuff has requirements of stability and safety which Squeak
isn't suited for - no matter how well PWS is written it won't approach the
speed and rock-solid permanance of Apache.

(PWS is, of course, much more flexible and easily customised then a lot of
the apps built on other technologies :)

Squeak should build on its strengths - and focus not on the same area of
web side scripting and serving but on the sort of personal computing which
is missing from the corporate-focussed IT world.  On the desktop side stuff
like Alice and the general Morphic environment are great examples of this
sort of thing.

When thinking about promoting and growing networking in Squeak, we should
be thinking beyond the delivery of static HTML/XML - swikis and muswiki
stuff are a good beginning.  The question we should ask ourselves is "How
can we leverage the amazingly powerful networking standards like TCP/IP and
HTTP etc to enable new forms of collaborative creation of great stuff, and
new forms of communication?"

In the end Squeak should be its own killer app.

Just my slightly incoherent $0.02

:)
Russell

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Russell Allen

russell.allen at firebirdmedia.com

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