[Squeakland] Help needed on reply about squeak

[Bert Freudenberg]

What would be really helpful is some tutorial projects that are  
downloaded right with the etoys installation. That is what we're  
doing with the OLPC version, for which we also are working on better  
language rendering support.

The OLPC etoys version should run fine on any machine. But making the  
example projects appear in the general projects list requires some  
work, and making the font choices configurable (they are set up for a  
200 dpi screen now) would also be necessary. A plan of action would  
be for someone to make a nice general etoys package from that version:

	http://etoys.laptop.org/src/etoys-image-and-pr.zip

Or rather from the etoys-dev image which includes source files at

	http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/

We (VPRI hackers) can certainly assist with that, though our main  
focus is the actual kid's machine right now.

- Bert -

On Dec 11, 2006, at 7:39 , Brad Fuller wrote:

> I received a reply on another mailing list from a person who  
> appears to have installed and briefly tried squeak, but had some  
> negative comments. I was wondering if others here could comment on  
> his reply about squeak and I'll condense a msg to him and send it  
> out to the mailing list.
>
> The original msg was a request (from someone else) asking about  
> audio software for children - the thread also included general  
> software for children.
>
> Here's his short msg:
>
> ===
> Just installed it. A very creative but frustrating package. As with  
> too many of these things, one must be able to read and that in  
> English (or a few European languages?). Fine print abounds in what  
> at first looks like a very sparse UI.
>
> The program abounds with objects and widgets. Some very creative and
> versatile, others frustratingly crude. Graphic objects like squares  
> cannot be resized (nothing stops one from reprogramming them and  
> then dutifully uploading the scalable versions for others to enjoy-- 
> smalltalk was once the rage.)
>
> Smalltalk 80 is, well, 26 years old. Before Unicode so is  
> incompatable with mutlingual keyboard choices. No Hebrew for my  
> daughter, not in UI and cannot type it in to text objects either.  
> Truetype fonts (newer than smalltalk80) are beatutiful but they are  
> also Unicode based nowadays.
>
> I think most kids would enjoy trying various widgets but run out of  
> patience doing anything more with them. Most adults would as well.
>
> -- 
>
>