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G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl
Fri Aug 24 08:54:57 UTC 2001


Noel & Andreas,

For the Squeak-community itself there is no need to have a Squeak-plug:

These clever people go to www.squeak.com, oops no, that is another club..
I mean www.squeak.org, They download the latest zip, bin or gz, open these
boxes and the fun can begin: They start their Squeak-image, They give the
command "load latest code updates" and they can go back and play in their
own updated world.

If they meet a problem, they know that they can use one of these archaic
internet-applications: the newsgroup, special for squeak developers
(squeak-dev-request at lists.squeakfoundation.org?subject=subscribe) drop their
problem and often get ann answers from the Kings themselves.
If they throw away a message and realise later - when the light goes on -
that it was useful, They can search for it in the discussion archives, yes,
very handy:
 http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/FAQMailingListArchives

OK, now back to the other people: Persons like myself are more
informatics-tourists, visiting Squeakland and enjoying all the toys that
seem to wait for us, sometimes already for years. We try to learn the rules
of this strange community, asking naive questions, wondering that simple
words (like archaic in the text above) create a waterfall of correcting
answers or even can provoke the fury of some experts when you press the worn
buttons (like I did in the neigbourhoud of the king of adventure.)
We discover that there are somewhere tutorials, have difficulty to find
those ones for the beginner, do not know where in all these swikis the gold
is hidden. (Why is there not a Capitol guide with pictures for this land, ok
Mark's book and..)  
We never will learn the hard-stuff, we keep silent in admiration when you
are talking about modules & components, we visit some websites you refer to
in your answers and are supprised how much stuff and clever thinking is
there outside on the web, fresh and free..
But above all, visiting your SqueakLand is fun fun fun, so we stay as long
as possible, hoping that we tourists do not destroy the original
community-spirit, or worse: that the community - bored by all these stupid
tourist-questions - creates walls to keep us out from some sacred
Squeak-places.

Ok, now another kind of people: the click-consumers. Someone installed on
their computers a Webbrowser and told them how to click on a hyperlink in
that webbrowser... and that is all what they (want to) learn about
computer-technology: they enter the www and click click click.
Reaching these people is more difficult. You have to organize guided tours,
you have to say please stay on the footpath (=in the browser, sorry Alan),
don't feed the animals....

I see Squeakland as a kind of modern Zoo for the clicking-community: Not
animals behind gates but  elegant organised settings where you even can hugh
some of these Squeak-beasts, play with them without doing them or yourself
intellectual harm....
And some of these clickers develop love for this small Squeak animal and
want to learn how to keep a Squeak at home. 
All the others click their way to the next www-zoo-attraction, wondering
about complexity of life. For these clickers Squeakland needs a plugin, all
the others can live with your instruction. 

(P.S. For schools, one of the targetgroups of Squeakland the problem is not
that big on this moment: They have most of the time outdated machines with
outdated software and even can handle upgrades...)      



 
   




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