G'Day,

I'm sorry.  I just feel so stupid at not being able to get my point 
of view across.

My argument is not that Squeak shouldn't be identical across all 
platforms.  It should - that's what I'm saying!

But I'm also saying the following:


1) Many people argue that the current user interfaces by Apple, 
Microsoft, Linux etc are old and boring and yucky.  But so is 
Squeak's!  And the proposed changes that I've seen don't seem to me 
to be doing much other than making Squeak look more like the other 
ui's - and not something new and fabulous.

Morphic is very interesting in that you can edit visual objects live, 
but beyond that, it doesn't seem to me to be anything special.  Am I 
missing something?


2) With FFI, users can create native widgets within Squeak.  But they 
can only do it for one platform at a time.  This surely breaks the 
write once deploy everywhere ideal?  Just look at the current thread 
"Using FFI to call standard Windows dialogs" in this list.  Won't it 
only get worse?

So, if people *must* have native widgets in Squeak, surely the best 
thing to do would be to abstract them as far as possible via some api 
so that the same code would work on other platforms?


Skins seem to me to be silly.  Why would you want to emulate an 
interface that you actually have available to you in the operating 
system - only more slowly?  How can that interface be emulated 
*exactly* without a great deal of effort - effort that, in my 
opinion, is much better spent on an entirely new and 
sock-knock-offing interface.  My opinion.


Is that clearer?  Clear as mud?  Perhaps I should just shut up.


Karl


P.S. My public education, along with "getting your point across", 
didn't include Latin.  What does 'ipse dixit' mean?  Thanks  :-}