When you are saving something outside of the image, you have to save
"something" and and you have to put it "someplace".  It seems
perfectly reasonable to me to have a dialog that supports this
concept, regardless of the specific details of the host runtime
environment (operating system, web browser, whatever).

Futhermore, the general notion of saving stuff in a hierarchical
organization makes sense. It is a simple and useful strategy that maps
easily to familiar OS file systems. And as a somewhat disorganized
person by nature, I can assure you that a policy of saving too much
stuff all in the same place is not a useful simplification ;-)

Dave


On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 12:48:34AM -0600, Chris Muller wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> A while back, we introduced a dynamic FileDialog pop-up to Save as... of
> the world menu.  At first, it seemed like a good thing -- you can save your
> image in a different directory from within Squeak, cool!, right?
> 
> So, why, when we use "fileOut" on the methods menu, don't we want to put up
> this dialog?  Something doesn't feel right about that, right?
> 
> >From the users' perspective, the entire Squeak IDE has always operated
> within and presented only its known, limited sandbox:  vm, sources, image,
> local-dir, changes, and mc repositories.  Staying within this sandbox has
> allowed the IDE to simplify a lot of operations.  Whether filing out a
> single method, change-set, preferences, image, or even versioning an MC
> package -- it's all (pre)configured so that the user, along with Squeak's
> IDE, can maintain focus on presiding over the virtual object environment.
> No regular IDE usecase has _ever_ bothered the user with information or
> questions about the world external to that sandbox.
> 
> IMO, the external world (OS, etc.) should preside over its own objects,
> just as Squeak's IDE should, over its, to each the maximum degrees
> possible.  The new FileDialog is good for configuring MC repositories, but
> I think we should back away from popping it up dynamically from the
> lower-level IDE operations like Fileouts of code or preferences.
> Encouraging users to use Save as... to do configuration could actually be
> harmful.  Besides that, it's slow.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Best,
>   Chris

>