---------------------- Forwarded by John Gardner/DMR/CA on 03/22/2000 11:40 AM
---------------------------


John Gardner
03/22/2000 10:47 AM

To:   squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
cc:   John Gardner/DMR/CA
Subject:  Widgets and Books for Squeak

Hello Squeakers,

I hope this email is sent to the right place.

I've started investigating Squeak for use on a number of projects, instead of
Java. Why? Squeak is free and truly delivers the "write once, run anywhere"
philosophy. I've read the SqueakEnd 00 pages and Alan Knight's Camp Smalltalk
efforts and the goals are terrific.

However, I am concerned on two counts.

1. Documentation
If you are interested in Java, there are many "Java in 24 Hours", "Java in 21
Days" and "Java in a Nutshell" type books and numerous online tutorials for the
core distribution of Java classes.

Where's "Squeak in a Nutshell"? I've looked at the various tutorials, but they
tend to be topic specific. As well, IMHO, there seems to be an underlying
attitude of "we've all been doing this for years". For new Squeakers these
points represent an obstacle.

My question to anyone is: are there any Smalltalk books in print, which come
close to the Squeak implementation, other than the original ST80 books?

2. Widgets
Everything today seems to be focused upon Morphic. While it has many features,
which make Java look sick, it is big and slow compared to MVC.

In the Java world, you have two options, use AWT or Swing. AWT is analogous to
MVC, while Swing is somewhat analogous to Morphic. If you are writing applets,
it is recommended that you use AWT for speed and compactness.

Similarly, wouldn't it be a good idea to have a core set of widgets developed
for MVC, when speed and compactness are needed? A lot of OS system functions
could be developed using Squeak and MVC-Widgets, instead of using
Perl/Tcl/Python.

IMO, there is a need to have a small, fast, core implementation of Squeak, using
MVC-Widgets. Perhaps a combination of the embedded Squeak and MVC-Widgets as a
core package, which is then built-up, as required, to include Morphic, Fabrik,
Alice and Wonderland.

Does anyone else think this approach has merit?

Thanks,

John.