On Tuesday 09 October 2001 15:07, Daniel wrote:
> [great CD-ROM example]
>
> This is the user experience regular people are used to dealing with.

Very true. My own experience with newbies is similar: if they "download 
and run" something from the net and it simply unzips itself leaving a 
.exe somewhere without adding a shortcut to the start menu, they simply 
cannot find it by themselves! So much for a "simple .exe" being the 
solution...

BTW, if you try to run your "simple .exe" inside Linux you will see how 
much of this simplicity is an illusion (which I think was Alan's 
point). It can be done, but you need to install WINE and other 
complicated packages and mess around a lot before it works. The reverse 
is also true - take a simple Linux binary like "grep" and see how much 
effort you have to put into getting it to run in Windows (even with 
something like Cygwin to help you out). In short, whatever someone 
already installed for you is easy, whatever you have to do yourself is 
hard.

But, as Mr. Spock would say: "there always *are* alternatives".

If you need simple, non graphical scripts then try GNU Smalltalk.

I had very good results with Smalltalk Express (ex Smalltalk V/Win) and 
the application I wrote with it in 1997 still runs fine on Windows 2000 
(I tested that last week). Their approach is very interesting - the 
bulk of the VM and Image is spread out between a dozen DLLs. You have a 
tiny .exe just to start things up. Anything you add to the "image" goes 
into that .exe (which you can name what you like). When you are happy 
with the applicationm just ship this single .exe file plus about three 
supporting DLLs and you clients will never suspect you used Smalltalk. 
The other DLLs contain the development environment, so you don't ship 
those (it used to be a legal restriction, though now that it is free it 
is merely a practical one).

Dolphin Smalltalk will also give you a very nice Windows experience, as 
will Smalltalk MT. I haven't tried Smalltalk Agents, but I think it is 
pretty good too.

So while it is possible to take Squeak in this direction, I don't see 
the point of doing so. But neither would I have any objections at all.

-- Jecel