Hi!

"Laurence Rozier" <laurence.rozier at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't support what Juan's proposal as stated. I'd like to hear why you,
> Juan or anyone else don't agree with what Jecel/Guy proposed

Ok, let me quote so that you don't need to skip back, Jecel wrote:

> This is a plan that is practical and which I fully support: if we can
> unload eToys but not load it back, then let's just include eToys in the
> full image that we distribute and allow everyone the one way option of
> removing it. I don't mind at all eliminating the Flash logo, the welcome
> windows and other stuff every time I begin working with a newly
> downloaded image. The fact that I can't get any of these easily back if
> I want has never been a problem since I could just start over from a
> clean image.
>
> Sure, a reloadable eToys would be even better but I doubt it will
> happen.

My problem with that proposal is that it means that Morphic is actually
not cleaned up - it would just persist as it is today.

It also means that any cleanup that such a removal-script would do in
itself (and Juan has already said that such a delta script is NOT easy
to maintain IIRC) would actually fork Morphic itself - people writing
code on top of Morphic in the future would have to wonder if it is being
run in the image-with-a-clean-morphic-without-etoys or in the
image-with-etoys.

In other words, the above sounds like either "status quo" or a fork of
Morphic. I dislike both. :)

Note that eToys is not a clean "addon" on top of Morphic - it is in fact
an intertwined mess with Morphic methods including lots of logic
specifically for eToys. So if you clean out eToys you end up with a
different Morphic.

I think it would be much better to lift the burden of eToys, let Juan do
his magic and give us an improved Morphic in the baseline - let anyone
step up and retrofit eToys on top of that as a cleaner addon, or not. In
either case - Squeakland is the place to go for eToys and has always
been.

> >if we can unload eToys but not load it back, then let's just include eToys
> in the
> >full image that we distribute and allow everyone the one way option of
> >removing it.
> 
> which mirrors what I said in "Smalltalk Reloaded". More specifically, do
> folks supporting Juan's proposal disagree with my statement:
> 
> >All other considerations aside, if e-toys is unloaded from the main
> distribution and cannot be easily reloaded by a new Squeaker,there will be
> confusion and for many disappointment and/or some other non-positive
> experience.

I am not sure I agree with this. Thing is, eToys in the "main distro"
(squeak.org) has been relatively unmaintained for some time I think
(others with better knowledge might disagree). I personally would not
trust eToys in official Squeak to work as one would expect it to work
relative to the Squeakland image.

And this goes especially for 3.9 and beyond, since Squeakland is 3.8
based.

So to rephrase myself - if we aim to minimize the risk of a non-positive
experience of eToys I think we should clearly and distinctly direct
people towards the Squeakland distro directly from the main page of
Squeak.org for those people looking specifically for eToys.

> For me it's not that I'm opposed to a cleaner Morphic, I just don't want to
> add stumbling blocks for wider acceptance at a time when eToy images are
> getting more and more visibility. Sure it would be nice to see the default
> image with a cleaner Morphic but not at any price - especially since Spoon
> is coming.

Mmmm, I don't see how Spoon relates technically to a cleanup of Morphic.
I consider those two efforts quite separate.

> It's not clear to me whether the upside of a cleaner Morphic wil=
> l
> be that great or long lasting because I believe we're in the early stages o=
> f
> a big paradigm shift in which Croquet
> UI<http://www.meshverse.com/2006/10/18/the-64-billion-dollar-question-reloa=
> ded/>(oh
> where is Wicket?) is where the action is. In this new paradigm, I don't kno=
> w
> whether a cleaner Morphic is going to have advantages over Tweak.

It is not so much about which is "best". Tweak is radically different,
and many of those ideas are great (AFAICT). I have on the other hand
heard people moaning about it being hard to debug and as we all know -
it is not "ready" for Squeak.org yet. Again AFAIK.

I don't think we should sit around and wait for Tweak to save the day -
we have already done so to a certain extent and I think we should stop
doing that. Morphic is nice and it can be small and lean too. Juan
offers to give us that and I think that is great.

Also - yes, the Squeaklanders did spend time to update eToys in 3.8 with
the changes that were done in the Squeakland image. But will they keep
that up? I am very unsure about that, would be neat to hear more from
Michael Rueger (or someone) on that issue.

If they indeed have an intention of maintaining eToys in 3.9 and beyond
(which I doubt) then that would indeed make the question more
complicated.

> Cheers,
> 
> Laurence

regards, Göran

PS. I don't claim the almighty truth - these are just my opinions based
on my perceptions and hunches. :)