Lex Spoon wrote:

> Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org> wrote:

> > This has always flabbergasted me. Why isn't the standard 
> > print port on current day OS's represented at least by a 
> > pseudofile called "Print".  

My guess is that mentioning my favorite OS without a Squeak 
port (yet) that does have the concept of a default printer 
wouldn't help here....

Jumping off-topic -->

> On Unix, the difficulty is with user code versus kernel.  
> Unix has this wonderful idea that most things can be placed 
> in the filesystem.  

> But it has this horrible idea that only special kernel code 
> can achieve it. 

I think these are two different ideas. Having a "standard"
virtual printer that you can point applications at without
worrying about WHAT that is would seem to be a good idea

Having user programs intrude/affect the OS isn't
a big deal on single user "personal" computers like 
most Mac & Windows systems but when it happens in
a multi-user environment (Linux/Unix/VMS/whatever)
it should be seen as a "Bad Thing".


But my impression (from various discussions I've seen on this 
mailing list) is that Squeak isn't really meant to be run in 
these kinds of environments. Squeak running on a multi-user 
machine should always run within a "sandbox"-like area.

-Andy-