Hi,
I feel like one of the "potential FFI" users, because I
 needed to access API calls in the past...
But when I read the implementation of FFI I returned
 to my simple API call mechanism, because it worked
 for me, and because I did not try to convince anyone
 about my point of view about the topic. [1]
I think that anyone can make a branch in any part
 of squeak (or any other smalltalk) and publish
 the results without been in the concordance with
 the guides (nor promoted people).
Following the own path has been proved a very
 good solution for innovation and give us freedom.
People that are free do not need any "maintainer",
 do not need to follow/wait anyone and can invest
 the time and resources (free time or bussiness related)
 to make real innovations without wasting efforts
 in convincing people with other point of views
 (the preservation of diversity).
I understand the value of some referents to follow
 and how much it motivates the newbies and people
 in auto-learning process; but I want to say that we are
 all free to make our changes in any part of a Squeak
 environment and publish them if anyone ask for it.
I have put my comment here because I do not
 know where is the place to inform bad experiences
 on parts of the squeak environment.
best,
Ale.
[1] I did not accept the complexity proposed by FFI
 mechanism and it force my solutions to be outside
 the suggested solutions to use by followers. It was
 one of the "side effects" of meritocracy and the
 current model of squeak direction. I really thought
 about investing efforts in trying to change people,
 but desided not to doit because I do not have
 compromise with my ideas nor the products
 of my activities in Squeak (and other
 smalltalks).

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 1:39 AM
Subject: Re: Proposal for Extensible Primitives (was: FFI)


> Ron Teitelbaum wrote:
> > To be sure it is possible that my reactions to the arguments are the
result
> > of naivety.  I am not aware of much of the past history and I have not
> > reviewed the relative parser implementations.  I will back off and let
> > Andreas and Lukas discuss the details.
>
> Please don't. We have too little user perspective in this discussion. As
> a maintainer, I will be perfectly happy to change things if there are
> FFI users requesting changes (and if they are within my abilities to
> change). So rather than listening to Stefane's insults I'd like to get
> more feedback from FFI users, in particular with respect to the
> following questions:
>
> If you are an FFI user and like the proposed changes:
> a) Where do you see the advantage of it for your work? How would you
> describe the value added? How would you argue to convince someone else
> that their code should be changed to the new model?
> b) Since there is room for ambiguity in supporting the current FFI spec
> and the proposed changes, do you think both styles should be supported
> for an intermediate period?
>     b1) If yes, for how long?
>     b2) If no, how do you propose to deal with migration?
> c) Given the choice, would you rather have an "inplace" change or
> perhaps an alternative version of the foreign function interface, aptly
> called FFII (pronounce as FF-2)?
>
> Cheers,
>    - Andreas
>