On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 06:14:52PM -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
> 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".

Yes I think this is the right thing to do. Having multiple versions
of the image is confusing (and also a lot of work to support). Many
people who download the "official" image will also be interested in
keeping up with the trunk, so making these as similar as possible is
a good thing.


> 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?

I think this is a good thing to do. Edgar's FunSqueak is a great
illustration of this approach in practice. It provides a way to easily
explore some of the extended possibilities of Squeak. Indeed, some
of Edgar's work might be exactly what we need here :)

I cannot personally make much of a contribution to this, but I hope
that some of the folks with an artistic bent will take an interest.
Also, if any of the FunSqueak content could be included, that might
be a good first step.

Dave

> 
> -- 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"
>