Stefan Matthias Aust wrote:

>>VisualWorks: It's a good and stable IDE but nothing really 
>>happend in the newer versions, also a big image
> 
> Hey, VW's base image is smaller than Squeak 2.6 (even without 
> adding the source and change file :-)

But I have to "parcel in" some tools to get to work - squeak containts all
his
stuff in the image. Comparing to squeak I think VW would win as a better 
Smalltalk-IDE (faster, stable, ...). But Squeak is a better system. 
In squeak I can switch to fullscreen and be in an own world. 
The problem of all other Smalltalk's is that they have problem's in 
the world of the different operating systems. You can't build 
small COM-components with VW in the Windows world!  
Platform independence is a nice thing to have - but why run on another
OS ? If I can't access the underlying OS it doesnt matter
if I run on Mac, Win, Solaris. 
So its better to boot squeak ;)

>>But Squeak is a little bit different: it's not only a Smalltalk-IDE it is 
>>a SYSTEM.
> So you think, this is an advantage?  I disagree.  It's the best prove for
> Smalltalk's biggest problem - it's authistic ignorance of the surrounding
> world.  

Yes - this ignorance is the problem of all the Smalltalks. They're "aliens"
on other systems. You can do 2 things: 
(1) Behave like a native program (with the same UI, fast access)
(2) Ignore the underlying OS and do your own stuff (like most ST's, Java)
(2a) Ignore and be an independent system

So I would like to see squeak as system of it's own. Not as YAP (Yet another
program)
Maybe on top of a linux kernel (we should not reinvent the wheel, except
we create a better one ;)

> My PC has 256 MB and a large and fast hard disk.  It has a fast graphics
> card and I like pleasant looking and easy to use applications.  Most
times,
> the look is more important than a certain feature.  Normally, I decide in
> the first 5 minutes whether I like a tool or not.  Celeste, Scamper, the
> whole Squeak IDE, even the SameGame or FreeCell can't stand 
> the comparison.

That's true. First make it right - then make it fast.

> With Squeak, you could do native widgets if you really want to. I once
tried
> for VisualWorks and only had to stop because I couldn't add a small
extension 
> to the VM.  With Squeak, I could.  On the other hand, if I want a
native-Windows
> Smalltalk, I'd probably go for a processional system, either Dolphin or
ST/MT.

Why native widgets ? You wouldn't be able to do all the halo things ;)

> I'm not sure, but I think, the Mozilla guys invented a 
> platform independent variant of COM as the core technology for their
browser.  
> Wouldn't this be a good way to start using something like COM but staying 
> platform-independent?

Yep - they've used COM inside of Modzilla. COM is platform independend, but
the platform (windows) depends more and more on COM. 

> > - integrate other languages into squeak 
> >   Prolog is done, what about C/C++, ...
> 
> Ih, no not C :-)

Why not - no one wants to use Smalltalk to write a device driver. 
At this time I'm using ST, C/C++, VB and MSJ++ with COM. 
ST/X is the only system I know that can provide similar things
(Claus has ST, Java, C, Prolog and Lisp)

>>Get squeak accepted in the developer community!
> How?

Very easy: don't stop at Smalltalk. But do whatever you can do with it.
Maybe you can translate ST-code to faster native code.

>>- Improve the multilanguage support (menue strings as interchangeable
>> resources, UNICODE, ...)
> Yes. Even without Unicode, most west european (yes, I'm biased) countries
> could be supported.  I'd really like to work with a localized 
> IDE - and no I don't want to translate the Smalltalk language, just the
tools.

That's what I mean - any string in the system should be handled as resource.
Resources should be stored in a compact binary format. Would be nice if we
could switch to another natural language at runtime. 

>> - give people what they wanna have on their computer:
>>   text processing, a good webbrowser, paint programs, media, games,
>>   communication, ...
> Hm, I already have WinWord (which I really like - mainly because it's also
> my VisualBasic development system ;-), Internet Explorer, PaintShopPro and
> Corel, media?, Warcraft, Agent & Eudora Light.  Yes, that's really
> Microsoft heavy, but on Linux, I'd use StarOffice, Netscape, Gimp, media?,
> games? and kmail oder elm or emacs or ...
> So I don't want these application.  Maybe I want the cores of these
> applications as pluggable components, but at least on Windows 
> with Office, I've this already.  It's amazing want you can do with the IE 
> components alone...

Yes - it's wonderfull to include IE into own applications. But windows
applications
have limits: I cant copy an image into wordpad, I have to use a paint
program
to rotate a picture, I cant use images in list views, .... (add thousand
other things here)

I don't want to have another WinWord or Excel - I want to have documents,
tables, shapes, numbers,
diagrams, sounds, texts, animations, images, ... (objects, morphs) that I
can combine, modify, print,
send to another user, rotate, mirror, copy, clone, publish, ...


-Torsten