One of the discussions about the upcoming 4.2 release in this week's
Board meeting was about what to include in the official image. There is
a tension between too bare of an initial impression and loading stuff
that is not universally needed. One obvious solution is to have multiple
official images (kernel, plain trunk, funSqueak, web development and so
on) and this may be adopted in the future, but it was decided that it
would be more practical to release a single image for 4.2 which should
be as close as possible to "plain trunk".

Official images are not just code, however, but have included text
windows with helpful information and even whole projects with neat
demos. The approach of using demo projects to showcase the system's
possibilities to new users can be seen in recent Etoys distributions,
though in that case the projects are not actually in the image (which is
read-only) but exist as separate files on disk and are loaded as needed.
In the older Squeaks the projects were part of the image, but were
trivial to delete cleaning up the user interface and releasing the
little extra memory they were using.

One alternative would be to include projects in the plain trunk image to
show off advanced features not loaded into the image. The project could
include a little button in the background attached to a script to load
all the extra code needed to do what it is explaining. The user would
have to choice to quit without saving if the feature turned out not to
be interesting or to save the image and keep that code even if the demo
project is itself deleted.

If the community finds this an interesting option, then people would
have to volunteer to build these projects. I am supposing this will be
an artistic effort rather than a programming one writing the script to
load the code is simple enough.

What do you think?

-- Jecel

P.S.: here is a quick review of non code material in previous official
Squeak images -

1.16:
    window "Welcome to ..."
    window "The Squeak User Interface"
    window "Managing and Saving Changes"

1.2:
    window "Welcome to ..."
    window "The Squeak User Interface"
    collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes"
    collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code"
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list
panes
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic

1.3:
    window "Welcome to ..."
    collapsed window "What's New in Version 1.3"
    collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface"
    collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes"
    collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code"
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list
panes
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow

2.0:
    window "Welcome to ..."
    window "The Squeak User Interface"
    collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes"
    collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code"
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list
panes
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo
    collapsed window "About Squeak 2.0"
    collapsed window "Pluggable Views"
    collapsed window "Two Virtual Machines"
    collapsed window "Image Size"
    collapsed window "Source Code Updates"
    collapsed window "The Wiki Wiki Server"
    collapsed window "Stylized Text and Links in Source Code"

2.3
    window "Welcome to ...."
    window "Getting Started"
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list
panes
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo

2.5
    window "Welcome to ...."
    window "Getting Started"
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list
panes
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper
    collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 7" - Alice demo
    collapsed project "Play With Me - 8" - Fun WIth Music

3.0
    window "Welcome to ..."
    collapsed window "Getting Started..."
    flash animated Squeak logo
    project "The Worlds of Squeak"
        subproject "Games"
        subproject "Graphics"
        subproject "3D"
        subproject "The Net"
        subproject "Scripts"
        subproject "Music"
    flap "Squeak"
    flap "Supplies"
    flap "Tools"
    Navigation Bar

3.2
    window "Welcome to ..."
    collapsed window "A Word of Caution"
    collapsed window "ReadMe.txt"
    flash animated Squeak logo
    project "The Worlds of Squeak"
        subproject "Games"
        subproject "Graphics"
        subproject "3D"
        subproject "The Net"
        subproject "Scripts"
        subproject "Music"
    flap "Squeak"
    flap "Widgets"
    flap "Supplies"
    flap "Tools"
    flap "Navigator"

3.8
    window "Welcome to ..."
    collapsed window "A note to students, parents and teachers"
    collapsed window "ReadMe.txt"
    flash animated Squeak logo
    project "SmalltalkIntroduction"
    flap "Squeak"
    flap "Widgets"
    flap "Supplies"
    flap "Tools"
    flap "Navigator"

3.10.2
    window "Welcome to ..."
    collapsed window "History of 3.10.2"
    collapsed application "Package Universe Browser"
    flash animated Squeak logo
    flap "Squeak"
    flap "Widgets"
    flap "Supplies"
    flap "Tools"
    flap "Navigator"

4.1
    menu bar
    window "Welcome to Squeak 4.1"
    collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface"
    collapsed window "Working With Squeak"
    collapsed window "License Information"