Jim Benson wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> This will be my last ranting for awhile, I promise, thanks for letting me
> vent some steam. You're suggestions were good, and thanks for the code.
>
> > While making Squeak more friendly to neophytes is important, I'm not sure
> how many you are losing at the moment.
>
> I'd assume that most of the people who download Squeak currently are
> interested in programming, and come from other programming environments.
> I'll just comment that I've been 'lost' twice over the last couple of years,
> and that I'm probably more motivated than most to stay in the fold. More to
> the point, I think you lose a group of people who could benefit the
> community at this stage of its development.

To be fair, it's easier for neophytes to change the default fonts than it used to be.  (You mentioned
fonts earlier.)  Simply go to the appearance... menu (seems like the most obvious one), and then the
system fonts... submenu, and then choose your new font.  Back in 2.5 or so, you had to remember to
execute some code somewhere in TextAttributes.

(True, with the menu you still have to set your default text font, list font, menu font, etc.... some
sort of "increase all fonts by one size" option would be nice.  And the menu is much nicer if you're
in Morphic, which is relevant to the latter half of my message...)

> > There may be a minor tweak that moves us in a more agreeable direction.
> >
>
> As I understood from the SqueakEnd in March, the initial startup screens and
> default look of Squeak is to change in the next release. I know that SqC has
> some folks looking into the end user side of things. I don't know the entire
> scope of what this entails, but it should allow for a better a better
> startup experience. I wanted to see what this turns into before screaming
> too loudly.

I think there was general agreement after the SqueakEnd that SqC was going to move to Morphic as the
default UI for the next release (the final 2.8).  MVC would still be kept around (possibly as a Play
With Me window?), but a fresh Squeak 2.8 would open up into a Morphic project by default.

I haven't heard anything about this switch in the last few months, though, so I'm not sure if SqC has
forgotten about it or decided to postpone it.  If so, consider this a reminder that I'd still like to
see it in 2.8. :-)

(The final Squeak 2.8 hasn't been announced yet, but it sounds like it's due to be released in the
very near future.)

Some of the earlier discussion on this from around the time of the SqueakEnd is at
http://www.egroups.com/message/squeak/12508 and http://www.egroups.com/message/squeak/12514 .

- Doug Way
  dway at mat.net, @riskmetrics.com
  RiskMetrics Group, Ann Arbor, MI
  http://www.riskmetrics.com