Squeak IDE Look-n-Feel

Ted Wright wright at en.com
Mon Dec 11 22:27:30 UTC 2000


Stephane Ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
>...But I'm really wondering why the blue look or some other nice 
>enhancements that  already improve the basic look in MVC are not 
>included in the release.
>
>All the people to which I show squeak over the two last year told me the same.
>Open Squeak alone is depressing because the look is ugly.

That is my experience too. 

However, when I tried to identify exactly what the problem was, I decided that 
"native widgets" like Asim suggested were not the answer. I don't want Squeak 
to look like Windows, or KDE, or Swing or whatever. VisualWorks does the native 
widget emulation thing well, and still does not look all that good. I want Squeak to 
look better than any of these.

Take a look at Henrik Gedenryd's preliminary anti-aliased font support for Squeak:
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1231
This is an example of a relatively minor (compared to native widgets) enhancement
that improves the look of Squeak way beyond any other "IDE" I've seen. Hopefully, now
that FreeType2 is officially released, this work can be finished and incorporated into
the default image.

Other than fonts, I think much of the new user GUI shock could be fixed with some 
preference adjustments in the default image.


Ted Wright	mailto:wright at en.com





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