To:   squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
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Hi.

Alejandro Reimondo made sqAPIs, a complete framework for accesing any host
OS facility (including native widgets). It works on the Mac and Windows,
and will be ported to other OSes. It is at
http://www.sugarweb.com/Miniatures/downloads.html.

The Cheese project from Boris Shingarov is at http://www.plugcom.ru/~squeak
.. It is a new environment, based on Squeak, but evolving to using only host
native windows. It runs on OS/2, but Boris needs help for making it work on
other OSes.
I thank theese folks for their great work, but I don't think this stuff
should be in the base image. I worked with Smalltalk/V Windows and
VisualAge Smalltalk for several years and got a lot of headaches because of
native widgets. The frameworks for native widgets are more convoluted than
MVC and Morphic, and what's worse, they are seriously limited by the
functionality supported by the OS, because you can't control all the code
that runs. Also, when something breaks, there are things you can't inspect.

The reason for leaving something out of the base image is not only to keep
it small. It is also to keep it consistent and easy to understand. And to
follow Squeak's philosophy.

Juan Manuel Vuletich
jvuletic at dc.uba.ar