Hi everyone,

In my opinion Squeak should not neglect the outside world as a data dump.

Am Fr., 27. Dez. 2019 um 07:49 Uhr schrieb Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com
>:

>
> 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.
>

As the user of both the external world and the Squeak world *I* want to
preside over all those objects. The bounds of both systems are arbitrary to
me. To achieve some kind of integration, Squeak should be able to view the
outside and work with it in a reasonable, open-minded fashion. Either by
providing good tools to deal with the outside world or by providing and
implementing the proper interfaces of the outside world.

About those interfaces with the outside world and insular software:
Windows has a nice object-oriented shell concept, but so few applications
integrate properly. The shell objects, mostly files, could have many useful
verbs (messages) in the context menu, provided by non-Microsoft software,
or generously implemented drag and drop handlers, or send-to targets.
TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit are fine examples: they add version control
verbs to every file you can browse. They might not be the best or most
efficient Subversion or Git clients out there, but in my opinion they are
the only ones true to the spirit of the Windows shell. But for almost all
file types and software you are supposed to "Open" the file and then
endulge yourself confined in the application that opens the file.

About Squeak as such insular software:
Today vanilla Squeak does not care all that much about the outside world or
integrating with it. The border of the window provided by the VM is like a
magical veil you cannot cross except by arcane ways (FFI) or with the
wisdom to shape the universe (extending the VM, instead of the image). The
drag and drop implementation with the outside world is very limited (cannot
drag anything to the outside, cannot accept anything specific in an
application that lives inside) and nice services that live outside are
seldom used.

For example, and to come back to the topic, I would be happy if Squeak
would use the save dialog provided by Windows itself. Then I could use
Windows libraries, unmounted network shares, file shortcuts, and my
favorites list, all without having to maintain code for any of that in
Squeak itself (well except for supporting UNC paths and file access
concerning those network shares...) Another example of a useful outside
service would be the credentials store or some kind of authentication API.
All accessible via FFI, sure, but it is no fun (tools to the rescue?). And
FFI itself is not even in Trunk, well well...

Kind regards,
Jakob
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