On Monday 17 November 2003 16:17, John M McIntosh wrote:
> [NeoSmalltalk]
>
> Yes he needs a browser too, but since his market is so targeted,

Well, I like to claim that my market is "the next billion users" ;-)

But since we have to start out somewhere, my initial focus is schools 
and students.

> a
> certain socio-economic group, in Brazil and things like the Brazil
> wanting to move away from Microsoft
> http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031116/D7URSKHO0.html then doing
> something like having web pages designed with a subset of HTML that
> the NeoSmalltalk  computer understands and implements is I think
> doable. Certainly for folks who want to target that market.

This is a good point and exactly what the Simputer people in India did. 
They defined their own HTML (called IML) to handle their needs. My own 
experience is that even the current internet users in Brazil rarely 
access content that isn't in Portuguese, and these are the folks that 
can afford to take their kids to Disneyworld every year!

But that is not the route I would like to take. Another thing I like to 
say is "low cost is no excuse". Something that offers less simply won't 
sell. Poor people can buy a really cheap used 486 machine today... why 
don't they? They probably wouldn't even be very pleased to get one for 
free, despite all those organizations asking for donations.

So I agree with the other people that have said you must offer something 
new. Croquet, not Scamper. Tweak, not Celeste. But also Scamper 
(improved version) and Celeste and something to write reports with and 
something to do calculations with (though the Analyst and Improv are 
more of an inspiration to me than Excel). Something new, but you 
shouldn't have to borrow a friend's PC to do something old.

Right now I am not happy at all that you will have to borrow a PC to use 
the FPGA tools, for example. Certainly it wouldn't be nice to have to 
do so to regenerate the system (so I understand Alan's wish for a 
self-hosting system).

> However this won't fly in the usa because of microsoft browser
> feature lockout...

The whole situation is a big mess. I have even come across sites that I 
couldn't read properly in Internet Explorer and had to fire up 
Konquerer! The opposite is much more common.

While my focus is exclusively on Brazil, I am more than happy to work 
with people in other countries who would like to have such a product 
(or something similar). For example, Devadas Menon is currently seeking 
funding to launch the smalltalk machine in India. His presentations say 
that we will have email, web browser, text editing and a spreadsheet as 
part of the package. My plan is to hire students from the two local 
universities next semester to help that become true. Of course I don't 
expect them to produce high quality products, but at least something we 
can start with.

-- Jecel