[squeak-dev] Maintaining Etoys in Squeak (was: Squeak vision)

Edgar J. De Cleene edgardec2001 at yahoo.com.ar
Thu Jul 2 18:55:58 UTC 2009




On 7/2/09 2:32 PM, "Bert Freudenberg" <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:

> On 01.07.2009, at 19:33, Ramon Leon wrote:
> 
>>>> Mind you, I never implied that work should stop to improve Squeak
>>>> in the
>>>> here-and-now (go back and read what I wrote). But for me every
>>>> improvement
>>>> fits into a larger context.
>>>> 
>>> I never implied that we should drop supporting an educational
>>> software
>>> for squeak (eToys & friends).
>>> Just tell me: who is currently maintains eToys in Squeak 3.10.2?
> 
> Whoever cares about Morphic.
> 
> As I explained before, Etoys development happened outside of
> squeak.org since 3.9. And even if we start fixing it now it will take
> quite some time before it is fully usable again.
> 
> Besides, it's not like all other subsystems have active maintainers,
> so there's no point in singling out Etoys.
> 
>>> If there's no-one, then wouldn't it be better to cut it out and
>>> integrate later as a separate module/package (whatever you think is
>>> fits for it) by people who cares?
>>> When i come to shop to buy a bread & taking it to the cash desk, is
>>> there anyone yelling at me, that i'm also need to pay for a bicycle,
>>> because bread is not selling as a separate product?
> 
> That's a silly analogy. If I could buy a Squeak version which had
> Etoys as an optional add-on that still works, I would take that. Alas
> the way Etoys was written goes against what you would call modular
> design and hence it is not a simple add-on. It's interwoven with
> Morphic to a degree the two are hard to separate.
> 
>>> Please understand me, i have nothing against eToys. But i treat eToys
>>> as an application on Squeak platform, not as a core part of it. And i
>>> thinking that it should play under a common rules as any other
>>> applications do: keep it as separate package.
>> 
>> Ditto, why is so hard for some to see that eToys isn't Squeak, it's
>> an app build on Squeak?
> 
> Because it's not. Wish it was, but it isn't. I guess you never
> actually understood the code. Nobody can even draw a clear line
> between what is Etoys and what is not. And no, the system categories
> mentioning "Etoys" are not it by far.
> 
>>  If eToys was a loadable/unloadable application, no one would have
>> any problem with it whatsoever.
> 
>>>> For example, the Etoys team started 2 years ago to develop a product
>>>> that got shipped to 500 thousand users by now, soon it will be a
>>>> million.
>>>> They did that with only a handful of developers working part-time.
>>>> Sticking
>>>> to the base system version they started out with was the only
>>>> option (as
>>>> everybody who ever did serious product development can relate to).
>>>> Now that
>>>> the hot development phase is over, the changes can be folded back
>>>> into
>>>> Squeak proper.
>> 
>> It doesn't need to be in Squeak at all, any version.  What it needs
>> is to be able to be loaded into Squeak like any other application.
>> There's just no justification for it being in the core image; none.
> 
> You're welcome to help make it so. It's just not as easy as ripping it
> out.
> 
> I think the discussion so far showed once more that there is wide
> agreement for Etoys having a major place in the squeak.org community.
> But the details of how it should be maintained are not well understood.
> 
> Unlike more recent Squeak additions that are nicely modular, Etoys was
> not developed as an "application" running "on top of" Squeak. It
> rather evolved in close symbiosis with the rest of the system, in
> particular the Morphic UI framework. I don't think we have enough
> resources to separate the two while keeping them alive. Maybe the best
> use of development resources would be to consider the current Morphic
> +Etoys a unit and work on an alternative, leaner UI framework? So the
> two would not step on each other's feet?
> 
> Ideas (and even more actual help) welcome.
> 
> - Bert -

But the fact was several of us made images without Etoys, and exist ways to
load again Etoys .

It's not easy and I agree having hard time drawing a line between Morphic
and Etoys.

If you answer with the last Etoys image and sources for developers I could
try to see how load the "Etoys part" into SqueakLightII

Edgar






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