Real people (was RE: [UNIX]Building modular VMs)

Raab, Andreas Andreas.Raab at disney.com
Thu Oct 12 00:51:35 UTC 2000


Lex wrote:
> Bah, let's let people deal with it.  What's hard about ZIP files?

Seriously, you don't quite seem to realize what the intended audience of
Squeak is. Jeff had a beautiful way of putting it when he was talking in
front of computer graphics guys about the Alice project. This is only a
brief approximation since I have nothing to draw on but here it is anyways.

Draw a circle. This is the intended user group for Squeak.
Draw a line.
Look at this line. You are in there. All your friends are in there. You are
not normal people. You don't even know any normal people.

Just to make a point here is an example of what normal people do. It
happened yesterday, when I got a message saying:

> ... The big Dell pc is Hi-Res (1024 x 768).  I loaded my Hi-Res
scaffolding onto
> a pc formatted zip disk and I transferred it to the Dell pc without any
> problems.  The only problem I ran into was launching Squeak on Windows 98.
> I doubled-clicked on the image and the computer asked me which program I
> wanted to use to open it.  I located the Squeak VM and chose that.  But it
> wouldn't open.  I also tried to drag and drop it on the VM, but you can't
> launch the VM on Windows 98 by dragging and dropping.  If any of you know
> how to launch a Squeak image on Windows 98, please let me know and I'll
use
> Squeak on the Dell pc on Thursday.  And then I'll pass it on to the NSF
> fellow who is eager to try Squeak this coming Tuesday.
>
> This left me with the back-up computer, my Mac PowerBook...

I replied to that message:

> [Re: Your Win98 problem]
> All of your described procedures are known to work (I use them several
times
> every day) and that leaves only two possibilities: 
> #1: (I really *hate* to ask this question but I have to) Did you actually
> use a *Windows* VM or did you just copy the 'Squeak VM' that runs on your
> Macintosh?! You might not be aware but the VMs are specific for each
> platform. If you don't know where to get a Windows VM, I can send you one.
> #2: Either the VM was broken during transport (possible) or maybe you
> renamed it into something Windows doesn't recognize. The VM must end with
> '.exe' or else Windows will not recognize that this is actually an
> application (that's a big difference to Macs where the name doesn't
matter).

To which the answer was:

> No, I didn't know there was a different VM for Windows.  Thank you for
> asking.  I'll be learning a lot about differnt platforms, etc.. this
coming
> year.  Yes, please send me a 2.6VM.  Is it OK to copy the image, changes,
> and sources straight from the Mac?

*THAT* is what real people are alike. And you want to explain to them that
they have to put these files in specific locations, must not forget to copy
the file XYZ over to a different machine, oh and please do not try this with
version Blablabla????

Sorry folks, but that is never going to work. If you want Zip-files make
your own. I will for the sake of the non-hackers community (which happens to
be the vast majority on this planet) provide VMs where you simply don't have
to be aware of all this nonsense.

  - Andreas





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