Daniel,

> No, no no. "more user friendly" just doesn't cut it. Are you 
> quite sure a different logical rule will cause no more confusion?
> do you have a concrete suggestion or at least a specific direction
> for the new layout you want?
> 
> I'm not being arbitrarily difficult here - I already gave it my best
> shot at making it user friendly. I realize that you may see thing
> differently, but I won't be enlightened by "more user friendly".

More user friendly:
Rule: Be consistent. In our case it means, don't confuse people who know a
package is there by not showing it to them as they update to a new version.
SM hasn't changed when you updated. Same for installing a package - if the
metaphor is that "we see SM" then don't remove the installed packages. SM
hasn't changed by installing it.
Rule: Don't try to be "overly smart" if you can assume a halfways
experienced audience. In our case, we can assume that if we tell people that
package vX has not tested with Squeak vY they will understand that there
*may* be problems (in many cases there will be none). Therefore, rather than
just filtering make it easy to see "what you approve of" and what you don't.

For example: By default, show all packages (or at least show a _consistent_
set of packages). Display those which were designed for your local Squeak
version as bold (to emphasise "those are the ones we approve of"). If you
try to install any of the others put up a warning saying "This packages has
not been designed for your version  of Squeak (X.y). Installing it may cause
trouble and you should only try to if you have saved your image (in case
anything goes horribly wrong). Do you want to continue installing package
XYZ?". In addition, if SMLoader is one of the primary UIs we use for dealing
packages it should show us that the package is *installed* rather than
*absent*. Consider displaying installed packages italic or adding a check
mark in front of it or something like it.

Note: None of the above prevents you from using filters - for those people
who've learned how to use them. But I think that for most people the way the
package loader works right now is quite confusing. For me, the most
confusing part is if I look for a package I *know* is on SM and can't find
it. Reason?! Because I have installed it already! Very, very confusing.

Cheers,
  - Andreas