[OT] RE: Microsoft removes Netscape support from IE; plug-in
needsre-writing.
Hannes Hirzel
hirzel at spw.unizh.ch
Sat Jul 28 05:27:46 UTC 2001
Hi Paul
Paul Fernhout wrote:
>.... but has not had Squeak's elegance at the lowest layer of
>simply putting bitmaps on the screen with a mouse keyboard event loop
>(instead relying on large bodies of C code for the GUI like TK or
>wxWindows).
Yes this is the thing I like about Squeak: Bypass a lot of bulky code
and work more or less directly with hardware drivers. Even if the
class library is sometimes a bit rough, but on *can* change things given
one has the time. Some things are even easy to fix. This is extraordinary.
>With Squeak as a ubiquitous middleware layer, one's application becomes
>to a large extent (not 100% but good enough) independent from the
>underlying system -- by the VM+plugins isolating those dependencies.
Squeak as hardware isolation middleware. Yes.
>since quoting Alan Kay, "any written
>standard with more than five lines is ambiguous" which is why Java is
>write once, debug everywhere.
I agree that most standards have often ambiguous points. But what does
that mean in this context? (Just a question of understanding the point)
>Unfortunately, right now, today, when I think of a stable cross-platform
>system (Mac, Windows, Linux), the only mostly polished solution is
>VisualWorks, and then I'm still dependent on one company. Python (with
>TCL/TK, wxWindows, or SDL), DrScheme, and Squeak which are all
>(primarily) single codebase standards all come close to being cross
>platform middleware, but all have serious rough edges or weak support on
>a specific platform when one looks at them from a broad deployment
>perspective (good as they are for other situations). There are a couple
>of the choices if one is willing to work mostly in C or Basic or a few
>other languages.
I'm interested in writing software (multimedia apps and CBT) in a system
with broad deployment possiblities and which is open source and which has
the chance to run still in 10 years time without too many porting efforts.
Is there an open source Basic system which works on Windows, Mac and Linux
with putting bitmaps on the screen and a mouse keyboard event loop similar
to Squeak? I'm not aware of one.
The 'basic' Basic has been around since about 35 years and
the descendants of it have the largest user community of the
world. But platform independence? I'm aware of the fact that it lacks
much of the elegance of Smalltalk but for many things it is
straightforward
to get a job done in a much more practical way.
>So Squeak is definitely getting there if the loose edges can be resolved
>(which is just a lot of work on issues [some of which are controversial]
>I won't rehash here).
But it would be helpful if you could post a link to a short summary what
are the weak points of Squeak from your point of view ("critique"). This
would help to see better what Squeak is and what it's not.
Thanks for your interesting contribution
Hannes Hirzel
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