Scott Wallace wrote:

> Hi, Karl,
>
> At 1:46 PM +0200 6/2/00, Karl Ramberg wrote:
> >  > Try Alt+q (or Cmd+q) and see whether that is the feature you're
> >looking for...
> >
> >Pretty close :-) Does not give alternatives dough.
>
> Repeated cmd-q's will cycle through the alternatives.
>
> >That is the quit key combination for _all_ mac programs, I would
> >never have guessed it did something else in Squeak :-)
>
> Well, in the very early days of Squeak, we *did* make cmd-q function
> as a synonym for Quit on the Mac, for the very reason you cite --
> that it's "universal" on the Mac.
>
> However, we quickly learned that this made it too easy to
> quit-and-lose-all-your-work (which the "Quit" from the Mac File-menu
> does in Squeak.)   For example, it's easy to slip when trying to hit
> cmd-a (for select-all) and by mistake hit cmd-q.
>
> Of course we can't expect to bulletproof our UI against typing
> mistakes -- but the severe consequences of an inadvertent quit via
> cmd-q were just too great to tolerate.
>
> Additionally, co-opting cmd-q for Quit made the traditional (and
> hugely useful) Smalltalk use of cmd-q for "query symbol"
> inaccessible.  For these two reasons, but primarily for the first, we
> decoupled cmd-q from "Quit".
>
>   -- Scott

Thanks, all for answering. One thing I like to add to this
is that Andrew C. Greenberg Quick Reference at
www.gate.net/~werdna/squeak-qref.html
is really a good  thing to print (37 pages on my printer)
out on paper and keep next to the computer when working :-)
I should have done that a looong time ago. It's a very good
sumary of all (?) of Squeak shotcuts lanugage defintion, etc.
A MUST !
Thanks Andrew!

Karl