Hi,
  As someone who spent time with tcl/tk and especially Tcl/Tk on the
mac, I mostly agree.  Tcl/Tk on the mac (and win32) is a great try
but you end up shoving a unix/X model into someplace it doesn't fit.
Digging down into the Mac specific code showed how ugly it was
at times.  In the end it was a lot of work to get Tk to work well
though the most recent versions do work well on the Mac.

  In some senses a cross platform GUI framework has been a bit of
a holy grail.  It seems like you should be able to make it work, but
as you get into it all kinds of things turn out to be quite difficult
to really get to work well.  Tcl/Tk seems to make it work, at the
expense of speed.  

  Anyway, I like th fact the Squeak looks the same regardless of the
system I use it on.

cheers

bruce



Karl Goiser <squeak at wattle.net> wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> I have a lot of trouble thinking about the idea of a business 
> interface for squeak.
> 
> I use Macs and when people talk about business applications and 
> computers for business, they mean pc's (at least here in Australia). 
> I can tell you from experience that people using machines on one 
> platform will not accept an application running on their machine that 
> looks and runs like an other platform (Mac, Unix, pc, whatever).
> 
> This is my understanding of why VisualWorks never really took off in 
> the business area (that and the high costs to purchase) - they came 
> very close to emulating, for example, the Mac ui, but not acceptably 
> close enough.
> 
> The questions about a user interface are:
> 
> - Do you succumb to a particular platform and just make it for that 
> one, shutting out all the others, like Dolphin and VisualSmalltalk?
> 
> - Do you try to be everything for everybody, doing nothing perfectly, 
> like VisualWorks?
> 
> 
> ***
> The thing that I'm starting to understand about Squeak is that its 
> real advantage is in that it doesn't look like anything else!  You 
> can't complain that it's too Mac like or too windows like if it looks 
> like neither!
> 
> I have a suspicion that building a standard UI for Squeak might be 
> the death of it.
> ***
> 
> 
> The only thing that I can think that might work would be to specify 
> an interface/protocol simple enough to be usable across all the 
> currently deployed platforms and then build a native UI for each 
> platform, just like happens with FileDirectory now.
> 
> For example, you could have an abstract text entry field with a 
> specific protocol that could then be implemented across the different 
> platforms.  The actual widgets could even be rendered natively.
> 
> The trouble would be in handling specific platform requirements, like 
> the single menu bar on the Mac.
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> Karl