reference manual need

Rosemary Michelle Simpson rms at cs.brown.edu
Sun May 20 19:45:12 UTC 2001


On Sun, 20 May 2001, Alan Kay wrote:

> Just as with LISP, this community works on stuff that it thinks the 
> community needs. There are great needs for various kinds of manuals, 
> and so it would be great if you could help write up some of the 
> things that need to be documented.

My initial plan is to work with Dandelion to get the classes up on my
website.  Then, I'd like to create a printable, yet easily modifiable and
extensible, class library manual.  Andrew Greenberg's point about 
obsolescence is critically important and must be taken into account in 
producing printable output.  As Ned Konz suggested to me, writing an 
output module to Dandelion that outputs XML, which I can then further
massage, is probably the way to go.
 
> There is also quite a bit of documentation of various kinds on the 
> swikis. It could use some organization and an editor, but there is 
> lots of useful stuff available.

Very true.  Since I'm a hypertext designer (the project I'm doing with 
Squeak is a spatial hypertext system called ConceptLab), the possibilities 
intrique me a great deal.  Especially in conjunction with the very rich 
motherlode of pattern community material currently living on the web.  

First, however, I need a solid and extensible reference manual with a 
first-class index.

R.
 
> At 12:00 PM -0400 5/20/01, Rosemary Michelle Simpson wrote:
> >I am coming to the Squeak/Smalltalk environment from a previous
> >life using the Lisp Machine environment.  Squeak's environment is
> >wonderful and contains many of the tools such as browsers and
> >inspectors that made working with the Lisp Machine such a joy. 
> >There is one major, and imho, very troublesome difference
> >however.
> >
> >One of the things that made using the Lisp Machine environment so
> >powerful was the combination of the comprehensive Lisp Machine
> >Manual (or Orangual so-called because of the color of its cover)
> >with the powerful online tools.  Squeak has the online tools but not
> >the reference manual.  This means you are constrained to one kind
> >of, very narrow, view and can never get the comprehensive view
> >you get from a paper manual such as the Orangual.  Does anyone but
> >me care? 
> >
> >R.
> 
> 





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