Hi Hernán,
That is a perfectly reasonable question.
My main concern is collaboration and community. While I support Juan and would like to know more about his work, it is very difficult for me to believe that Juan will be able to provide more of an advancement for Squeak then Tweak and Croquet will. eToys is today is a bridge, even if it is outdated. Morphic in my opinion may be good for development tools, but fails to provide an interface that is usable for more then that. The question is should we move Morphic forward without eToys so that it meets the requirements of users. My answer is that we have not listened to users enough to know, we have not engaged enough resources to make it worth while and we have not proven that our efforts will produce more then the large scale development which is Tweak and Croquet will.
Does it make sense to work with and incorporate these new developments into Squeak? Yes I believe it does. I would like to see Juan and other Squeak developers work towards getting Tweak ready and include it in Squeak. This would be the best of both worlds, we could then better support Croquet out of the box, and we would have a new cleaner Morphic model and eToys that squeakland could help support.
I also support greater control and participation of the volunteer community. I know that we are in transition and these issues are very important to everyone. While I support greater independence I believe the only way that the community at large will progress is if we find a way to organize our efforts in a way that allows us to provide valuable contributions. That involves greater user engagement, and in my opinion, a greater focus on useful applications, or tools/components to build applications. I do not support cutting off our founders to gain that control and, as I have said earlier, I believe that the competition and tension that these competing groups create is a good thing.
Can Morphic 3.0 be implemented in Tweak?
Ron Teitelbaum
________________________________________ From: Hernan Tylim Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 10:59 AM
Hi,
I just wanted to state something that I think most of all proponents of keeping etoys are missing. Sorry in advance if its not the case or this statement of mine sound a little harsh. (please blame my lack of a better english, and time to write it better)
I kept reading and reading this thread and the other ones related to it, and everybody who asked to keep etoys on squeak-dev seemed to me that they were not aware that the currently etoy image isn't the current squeak-dev. If you want to use etoys you need to use the squeakland image.
While its true that etoys works on 3.9, remember that the maintainance of etoys is done on the squeakland image (which is not even a squeak-dev 3.8 image, only one based on it)
So what I don't understand is why everybody insists on using etoys in squeak-dev 3.9, when the people behind etoys don't use, nor maintain, nor can make any kind of assurance about etoys in 3.9.
In fact I think its contraproducent to keep etoys in this setup. Because we risk that anyone wanting to use squeak because of etoys, they might have a bad etoy experience because they are using 3.9. I, on the other hand, would always direct all the people interested in etoys to an squeakland image instead.
Lastly I would like to ask Ron, Klaus, Jecel, Lex, Marcus, and the other people that on this thread said that wanted to keep etoys if they have considered this issue and I would like to know what they think. Again. Apologies if my mail didn't sound right. I am just curious and no offense was meant to anyone.
Regards, Hernán On 10/31/06, Ron Teitelbaum Ron@usmedrec.com wrote: All,
I stand by the suggestion of either replacing Morphic and Etoys with Tweak and Tweaks EToy implementation, since there is significant work going into both, or adding a script that removes eToys from the main image upon developer request. If a further development of Morphic is wanted and that development requires the removal of eToys from the main image, I support that also. In other words if we want Morphic 3.0 then the developer is required to unload eToys and then load Morphic 3.0 into their own image.
I do not support removing eToys from the main image without replacing it with Tweak and the new OLPC eToys.
The reason for my position is that I support community bridges which I have discussed at length in previous postings.
My suggestion for 3.10 is to work towards consolidating current advancements from all platforms, Tweak, eToys, Croquet and OLPC into Squeak's main image. This follows the suggestion of finding work that is already completed and ready for inclusion into the main image.
A question for Juan, can your Morphic 3.0 advancements be applied to Tweak?
Ron Teitelbaum
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev- bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of goran@krampe.se Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 3:03 AM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: I am standing by Juan's proposal, do you? (was Re: Removing Etoys,Morphic and other friends)
Hi all!
Since it feels that we are getting more concrete here I decided to rename the subject. Perhaps people join up in the discussion again. :)
Juan Vuletich < jvuletich@dc.uba.ar> wrote:
Hi Goran!
goran@krampe.se escribió:
Hi Juan and all!
I just want to say I am 100% with you on all this.
Thanks. It's nice to know that.
Though I am just one of "us" you know. :) But yes, it is nice to feel that people agree - and as I said I am all with you for three major reasons:
- You are a doer. You have already proved that.
- You are committed to this. We don't have many people committed to
Morphic development (on this low level) these days and I value each and every one highly. 3. You have a plan.
And my principle is that if someone is itching to improve something and has the above 3 things, then there is not much to argue about - I say go. :)
Could you possibly (as you probably know Morphic/eToys better than
most
of us) list the parts that we could "decide" about leaving in or
ripping
out? Lex started a list, but he also included some things that I had
not
thought were included (like ImageSegment for example).
To me eToys what you can find in the eToys package. That's why I put it there!
:)
Going thru Lex's list. (Lex, I didn't answer to your post because I think the list should be built by the community, and I didn't want to sound authoritative on this!)
- Tile based programming system. Yes. The central part of eToys.
- Halos. No. Halos are key to Morphic.
- Named morph search. No. I'd put this in 'MorphicExtras'.
- Uniclasses. Yes. They were implemented in Squeak to support eToys. And
they are not Smalltalky to me. However, 'make own subclass' is not eTtoys, and distinct from uniclasses to me.
- SmartRefStream and ImageSegments. No! Why would they?
- Projects and saving projects. No.
- Paint tool. No.
- Flaps. No.
I think this list sounds perfect to me.
Anyway, I don't want to say what should be removed and what should not. But clearly in my reduced 3.7 image, I removed lots of stuff besides
eToys.
Let me repeat: To me eToys what it is in the eToys package.
I think it would be a nice way forward in this discussion.
regards, Göran
PS. This subject came up around an OOPSLA hacking table with Dan
present
- he also remarked that Morphic is indeed quite small - if you
consider
only Morphic itself.
:)
But we did not discuss the issue at any great length. Also Doug applied your recipe to have a look at the result
etc.
Doug, I'd like to know what were your impressions on this!
We never got around to any personal conclusions, though. But I for one applaud and greatly appreciate your diligence in this matter and I
think
it would be GREAT to have a small "isolated" clean Morphic in Squeak that is maintained and proven. And I am probably not alone in that.
Well, I hope you're interested in my Morphic 3.0 project then. It is my vision for morphic improvement. Check www.jvuletich.org !
I am. Let me put this interest in some perspective btw:
- Morphic is proven to work. But seems to be in a mess and thus is
brittle and also not maintained much because people can't get a grip and are also appalled about lots of the stuff that is in there today (eToys related I think). So it is sitting still today. Btw, this is MY primary objective behind getting eToys out - because I want a more attractive Morphic that then might get maintained instead of just sit there.
- Tweak came along and people interested in these things probably
decided to hang around and wait to see if Tweak would end up replacing Morphic in "official Squeak". Now it seems to not go that route, at least not in a hurry. I love the fact that we have Tweak and new ideas etc, but perhaps it is time to grab what we have and make the best of it instead of waiting for Tweak.
So... Juan stepping up and offering his time to produce a clean, maintainable and rejuvenated Morphic is IMHO Right On Cue.
I hope that people raise their voices and give him their support. I then hope that the next release team (3 people that we still do not know who they are) considers giving Juan a slot in 3.10 for this rejuvenation, and I also hope that the board show their support in this. And I hope that Juan is willing to take on the Steward role for Morphic together with a few more brave souls with an interest in Morphic (there are a few I think). I bet perhaps even Dan Ingalls could be interested, but he might be too busy at work.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
regards, Göran