I finally found the time to read through this post and it was all good.
I heartily agree. Just a small "defensive" note, though:

"Jim Benson" <jb at speed.net> wrote:
[SNIP]
> I've had quite a few laughs the last few days reading the list with all of
> the different suggestions to make Squeak more mainstream. These suggestions
> have ranged from let's write another book, let's have more documentation,
> let's have a better website (including my favorite comment of the entire
> last year, something along the lines of "Let's make sure the HTML on the web
> site is good (well formed) so that people will take us seriously").

I think that was my post that said something similar to that.

> I'm not against any of those things, most all are obviously good ideas. I
> think there are different issues here. My first question would be, "Why do
> you care what others think about Squeak?". I think this time would be better
> off spent making Squeak better for the people who use Squeak. What does
> "mainstream" mean -- and why in the world would you devote any energy to
> getting it?

And my defense here is that I don't really want to attract users.
Currently Squeak is a wild place to live in and regular *users* don't
have that much of a chance to find it appealing.

I want to attract *developers* (and sure, they are also users in a sense
of course) and being a developer I think that other developers might
react as I do. If I visit a site built by other developers touting a
development tool my first impression of the site does affect my thoughts
about the tool. I am aware that this may fool me, but it's the way
people work.

So... my idea was that if we do want to attract other developers then
things like "first impression" actually counts. And for a lot of
developers (especially people working with the web) things like proper
HTML is a "touchy" subject.

regards, Göran