Please don't read this message if you don't have time or inclination  
for a quasi-philosophical ramble down Smalltalk Lane. I'm posting  
this here to share some experiences I doubt are new or unique but  
which I haven't seen discussed here in the many months I've been back  
on the list.

I have been involved in Smalltalk on and off for a good many years.  
It keeps calling me back, like the Sirens, whenever I go in search of  
a new tool because the one I'm engaged in at that moment falls short  
or disappoints or just annoys me. As a result of this on-again, off- 
again love affair with Smalltalk and Squeak, I'm far from as  
proficient a coder or knowledgeable a designer as I would certainly  
be by now if I'd stayed put here. But I haven't been able to do that,  
for a host of reasons that are mostly boring and unique so I won't  
relate them here.

Today I had a conversation with a colleague and friend I had referred  
to Squeak as a possible solution to a specific set of problems he is  
working on for a client. He spent a full day exploring Squeak and he  
came back with an observation that I found difficult to answer.  
"Why," he asked me in all sincerity, "is Squeak so ugly? Smalltalk  
has been around 30 years. It's been in the hands of great design  
firms like Apple and Disney. It's had IBM backing. Doesn't anyone in  
the Squeak community understand how a polished, modern user interface  
would help to sell their technology? Other than wxSqueak, which seems  
basically moribund [I disabused him of this notion in our  
conversation, but that was his finding on his own], there's nobody  
out there talking, thinking or working on a professional-looking UI  
for Squeak's IDE or for deployment of applications! What's going on  
there?"

So I spent a couple of hours looking at the question he raised and  
what I *think* I learned is that because of the way Smalltalk  
implements graphics at some deep level beyond my ability to penetrate  
the image, modifying its basic UI to use a more modern and reactive  
user experience would be a major, major challenge. After 30+ years,  
there is no way to do native UI widgets (other than wxSqueak if and  
when it gets finalized and hopefully incorporated) let alone custom  
widgets that look polished and professional. I was able to determine  
that there appears to be a class (PNGReadWriter) that would  
facilitate the import of PNG images, e.g., to use as controls. With  
enough time and understanding, I could presumably figure out how to  
import a graphic (PNG or other) and make it behave like a button, but  
then getting it into an app layout would require another level of  
understanding.

You get the idea. (And please don't spend time telling me how to do  
that particular task; I don't have the expertise or interest anyway.  
It was merely an illustration of what the problem appears to be.)

I explained to my friend that Squeak has been used primarily for  
research and education, not for the creation and deployment of  
commercial applications where a standardized platform-specific UI was  
important. For him, that's a reason to avoid Squeak altogether.

So with that (probably overly long) background, I can ask my  
question, on my friend's behalf.

Why, after 30 years, does Squeak still appear to be a non-standard,  
almost toy-like user experience in the IDE? Is it the case that  
changing that would be far too complex to undertake? Or is it that  
the community of Squeak users just isn't largely motivated to worry  
about this subject? Or is the absence of an economic incentive the  
problem? Or IS there a problem?

Thanks for any wisdom you can share. This is one of the two big  
objections I *always* get when I recommend someone look at Squeak as  
a possible solution to a problem for which it appears to me to be  
ideally suited linguistically and architecturally.

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Dan Shafer
Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
"Looking at technology from every angle"