I received a reply on another mailing list from a person who appears to 
have installed and briefly tried squeak, but had some negative comments. 
I was wondering if others here could comment on his reply about squeak 
and I'll condense a msg to him and send it out to the mailing list.

The original msg was a request (from someone else) asking about audio 
software for children - the thread also included general software for 
children.

Here's his short msg:

===
Just installed it. A very creative but frustrating package. As with too 
many of these things, one must be able to read and that in English (or a 
few European languages?). Fine print abounds in what at first looks like 
a very sparse UI.

The program abounds with objects and widgets. Some very creative and
versatile, others frustratingly crude. Graphic objects like squares 
cannot be resized (nothing stops one from reprogramming them and then 
dutifully uploading the scalable versions for others to enjoy--smalltalk 
was once the rage.)

Smalltalk 80 is, well, 26 years old. Before Unicode so is incompatable 
with mutlingual keyboard choices. No Hebrew for my daughter, not in UI 
and cannot type it in to text objects either. Truetype fonts (newer than 
smalltalk80) are beatutiful but they are also Unicode based nowadays.

I think most kids would enjoy trying various widgets but run out of 
patience doing anything more with them. Most adults would as well.

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