Cees and Tim,

I agree that a good web browser should be the number one priority. It is
indeed hard to do but I think we need a reasonable expectation about
this - I regularly use Mozilla, Safari and Internet Explorer and run
into sites that are not very usable on two of them (different two in
each case. I was really surprised that there are people out there who
have made sites that don't work on IE!).

We don't need a perfect solution, but besides HTML (and CSS) we need
JavaScript, Java and Flash. The Simputer people just gave up and defined
their own special language (IML) for their device to access. This was
possible because there was essentially no previous content in their
target audience's native languages and they would also be unlikely to
want to access the wider internet available in other languages. This
wouldn't work in Brazil, for example, where there is already a lot that
would be interesting for the future laptop users (a few important sites
even used Active X, but that seems to be going away).

In option 1 (regular Linux laptop) we already can invoke external
browsers from Squeak, right? That might be good enough for now.
Alternative 2 (Squeak on thin Linux) is where it would be interesting to
make the external browser seem to be a Squeak application. For 3 (Squeak
on raw hardware) it would have to either be a native solution or a
plug-in using a library borrowed from an existing browser.

What isn't a practical option is trying to fix Scamper. It is typical of
a quick hack that got a job partly done and then simply stayed forever
in the image. I know the value of code that actually works, but a better
development style is to learn as much as you can from your first try and
then to start over. This normally involves creating more infrastructure
than you had in your first attempt. So you might build a decent layout
framework to replace all the hacked placement code.

I think that with the proper frameworks, these important apps would
prove to be almost trivial: text processing and a spreadsheet. Squeak is
already pretty good as a PowerPoint replacement, so I won't mention
that. Email (could be better, but I am typing this in Squeak) and
instant messaging are covered. Anything else?

-- Jecel