On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Lex Spoon wrote:

> Alan Grimes <alangrimes at starpower.net> wrote:
> > My own experience with squeak is that it only needs a decient
> > web-browser and a usable word-processor as well as a few layout fixups
> > to be ready for prime-time...
>
> This doesn't sound quite as crazy as people are making it out.  You
> would have to be very very careful, though, about what gets implemented.
>  It's widely suggested that the vast bulk of features in Word, Excell,
> and, dare I say, Mozilla, are not necessary.  If you relentlessly focus
> on what is necessary to make a useful home computer, you could do it
> with a dozen programmers and a year or two's effort, as an optimistic
> estimate.  You would certainly not want to go down the list at w3.org
> and implement every TLA they have, but you could do HTML 4 and style
> sheets and JavaScript.
[snip]

Or you could focus on integrating the publically available JavaScript and
HTML engines tightly with Squeak. To make them work well (well, more Gecko
than JavaScript) in a Squeakly way is an interesting challenge in itself,
and it means you do less Wheel reinventing, and I'd imagine, you have less
overall effort.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.