--On Monday, June 21, 1999, 9:00 AM -0400 "Andrew C. Greenberg"
<werdna at gate.net> wrote:

>> I'd just like
>> to interject, as 'tis my wont, that at least one goal for Squeak is to be
>> an, and I *love* this phrase, "exquisite personal computing environment".
>> For it to be *equisite*, I think it needs to be both adaptive and
>> adaptible. This holds for UI (whether G, or otherwise). It also will need
>> to be consistent and inconsistent to *just* the right measure. Whatever
>> the heck that is :)
> 
> No argument here, although I don't agree that the fact that the 
> Squeak's GUI is arbitrarily mutatable is the GUI's (let alone 
> Squeak's) greatest virtue or most important feature.

Well, you aren't disagreeing with *me* :) Note that I count the class
hierarchy, Smalltalk syntax, etc. as aspects of the UI! Interaction is the
name of the game.

>  As to GUI and 
> GUI architecture of Squeak, some of the advances I have seen are 
> staggeringly cool (e.g., Morphic), and still others hit me as 
> incredibly ho-hum, albeit useful to some (including myself). 
> Frankly, Bob Arning's recent contribution demonstrating how to 
> elegantly and easily build a simple data entry form was far more 
> interesting to me (and useful to newbies, IMHO) than recent works 
> (however attractive -- and I agree they look nice) in sprucing up the 
> GUI "looks."

Yes. I had a similar hit when exploring the pluggable text/list/switch
classes.

> In my experience, newbies seem to be asking far more often the 
> question, "how can I make it do ___," than, "how can I change the 
> look of the windows."

Sorry, I was counting "doing" as well. Not just themes, but behaviors. I
think I'm in the wrong argument ;)

> But let's not lose focus what we are discussing.  We have been 
> discussing revisions the home page  http://www.squeak.org, and how 
> that might be illustrated.  In this context, let us revisit the 
> TEXTUAL MESSAGE of that page, which purports to address both the 
> questions (the "Key Questions"): "What is Squeak; and Why is Squeak 
> important"

Ooops. I did lose the focus.

As other people mentioned, being able to experiment with UI in a flexible
and portable way *is* a key feature of (most) Smalltalk systems. I'm not
sure it needs to be explicitly stated. The roots of morphic ("tactile"
programming?) imply that UI is fairly important to Squeak.

> Having an "adaptive and adaptable" GUI isn't on the list.

Er...I didn't *quite* say that. The adaptive and adaptable refered to the
*computing environment/system*. UI is just one aspect.

>  Is Squeak 
> Central wrong?  Has T.K. lost his mind and missed the key feature, or 
> is Squeak something else (and perhaps more than) an adaptable GUI?

I wasn't implying that, and I guess I wasn't arguing that we should put
neato themized screenshots up. I just disagree that flexibility in
UI--especially the graphical--is unneeded or unwanted. That's all I was
responding to ;)
[snipped massive indications that I was on a digression :)]

> For my part, I don't think that Squeak is predominantly or even 
> significantly a GUI (although the underlying MVC and Morphic 
> architectures *are* highly significant contributions), and if so, I 
> don't think Squeak would be particularly important for that reason 
> (except historically -- I must confess that I got a huge bang out of 
> seeing a direct Smalltalk-80 MVC derivative on my iMac, and then 
> running bit-for-bit identically on my PC).  I see GUI as merely 
> another illustration and subset of the general feature "reusability."

Totally agreed. That's why I made it an *implication* of "equisite personal
computing environment". It is, perhaps, not one to be emphasized strongly,
but neither is it correct, as I inferred from your prior post, to dismiss
it.
 
[snip]

> So what is Squeak's mission statement?  What is it that makes it 
> fundamentally different or better than that which we already have? 
> What is the answer to the question, "Why should you download this?" 
> and then, "Why should you use this?"
> 
> Now, *THAT* would be marketing!

Well, as you may have gathered (and I think you share this thought), I
think "marketing Squeak to the masses" is not  a wise use of resources, at
least at the moment. Answering the question, "Who is it that should
download this?" seems prior, and shifts over time. 

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.