OT - Squeak and the Broader Software Community

goran at krampe.se goran at krampe.se
Sun Jul 9 23:44:50 UTC 2006


Hi!

David Mitchell <david.mitchell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The main thing I missed was good fonts. Henryk's bluelook to me was the
> answer, but it never got integrated. I always thought it looked
> professional, but it never got integrated. I think bluelook appeared way
> back when Squeak central was still running things. It didn't handle
> colored text, which I imagine would have been a show stopper.

Well, I don't think there ever was a conscious decision *not* to
integrate it - it was simply not done. Like with a lot of things. And
the work is still available to grab - as someone did recently after I
mentioned it in some other thread. His name was Henrik btw.

> Your real question is why doesn't Squeak look better? I suppose because
> the people in charge of the base distribution have other concerns that
> they feel are more important.

Let me rephrase that with a different wording:

"I suppose because the people *spending their time improving Squeak*
have other concerns that they feel are more important *to them*."

The difference in wording is important. If anyone actually did work to
improve looks (which happens from time to time, like the work of Diego)
I think there is no inherent resistence against integrating it. Though
looks in general is hard because people tend to think differently about
what is "good" or "bad" and the changes tend to spread all over the
large code base.

But there is AFAIK no explicit decision by "anyone in charge" to not
work on looks.

regards, Göran

PS. I would love Squeak to look super cool and be swift and with a
really nice and good feel. But I will not spend time on it because I
also have "other things of concern". Thankfully there are others working
on such things like Tweakers and Sophiers etc. :)



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