On Saturday, July 21, 2001, at 02:53 AM, Hacker wrote:

> Hi Smalltalkers,
> ...
> I love the Smalltalk paradigm. It is so fast and powerful. But 
> unfortunately no one has set a useable standard of the language for 
> developers. Squeak looks like the best place to start - seriously!

Hello Randy.  Welcome to Squeak!

Actually, there is an ANSI standard now for Smalltalk, as others have 
mentioned.  Of course, the standard doesn't cover some aspects such as 
GUI's, but other language standards normally don't cover this either.

> I'm not saying that we have to rewrite Squeak. I only suggest that 
> serious developers consider adding to the existing Squeak hierarchy 
> an extension of classes devoted to the needs of end-user software 
> developers. Most needed would be a Smalltalk to C translator for the 
> end-user development extension classes, which would be capable of 
> handling several of the most common hardware platforms. This translator 
> would need to be high-level buffered from specific hardware/OS 
> requirements much as Smalltalk uses a few primitives to buffer the 
> hardware/OS specifics from the programmer.

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at here... are you saying that 
a Smalltalk to C translator is needed to natively compile an entire 
Squeak/Smalltalk application (or primitives)?  Java doesn't bother with 
this either, and it's rather popular (too popular, actually ;-) )... 
pretty nearly everyone just uses Java with a VM, like Smalltalk does.

(Which isn't to say that natively compiled Smalltalk wouldn't be useful 
or interesting, but it's definitely not necessary.  You can still write 
and compile primitives in C if you need to speed up tight loops.  Also, 
Squeak now supports a Foreign-Function Interface (FFI) which lets you 
directly call native functions in .dll's, etc.)

Or are you saying that the Smalltalk to C translator is needed for 
end-users who are familiar with C to customize things?  That seems kind 
of iffy.  Although there have been people on this list doing work with 
Smalltalk->Java/Python-like pretty printing.

> The Developer badly needs the equivalent of VB's GUI designer. This 
> tool was available in Visual Smalltalk as the "Workbench". Squeak, as 
> far as I know, offers no equivalent GUI builder system.

I sort of agree here.  Most of the UI work in Squeak is geared toward 
experimenting with new UI ideas (Morphic, EToy scripting, etc.), so 
Squeak doesn't currently include your basic GUI-layout tool.

However, there are a few GUI-building tools that some people have 
developed externally... "Prefab", "SguiKit", "BobsUI", etc.  See 
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/guiBuildingTools for an overview of 
them.  It would be cool if people starting seriously using and improving 
one of these tools.  (Actually, I know a few different people have used 
BobsUI for stuff, although that one doesn't let you layout stuff 
graphically.)

Also, none of the above try too hard to fully emulate the look and feel 
of, say, Windows.  But that wouldn't be an impossible task.  Using 
native Windows widgets might be more difficult, but could be doable via 
FFI.

> I am willing to work with others to develop this most useful extension 
> to Squeak.  Squeak has been more difficult for me to learn and use than 
> Visual Smalltalk was, so please feel free to let me know how ignorant I 
> am about any of the issues that I have thus far discussed.

That's cool that you are willing to contribute (in addition to 
griping ;-) ).  I'd suggest trying out the UI building tools above, pick 
the best one and see if you can improve it to fit your needs.  You can 
always email the list (or email me) if you run into problems.

- Doug Way
   dway at riskmetrics.com