A stupid newbie question

Russell Allen russell.allen at firebirdmedia.com
Wed Oct 10 01:43:44 UTC 2001


"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok at atlas.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
> The number of files there *are* in an application *once it is installed*
> and the number of files the user *has to touch* to make installation happen
> are very different things.  The fact that a Squeak application might want
> a VM, some sources, an image, lots of pictures, and some squeak-books
> doesn't mean that the *user* ever has to touch more than one file.

When I started to use Squeak, it came in four files (VM, image, changes,
source).  When it ran, it ran within those four files.

Now my four files have grown.  I have another four files for Email, a
folder called 'prefs' and another folder called 'audio' that have popped
up from nowhere.  A 'squeaklets' folder has appeared and started to fill
itself with stuff.  When I run Squeak, misc files such as
'SqueakDebug.log' appear, change and dissapear.  And (worst of all) a
folder called 'My Squeak' has appeared in a completely different part of
my hard drive (although, to be fair I think this is from the browser
plugin :).

All of these things appear to me to be a function of the fact that the
image is not stable enough to handle permanent storage of large amounts
of data.  In a (ok, my :) perfect world my email, audio files, image
files and preferences would be just more objects in my squeak world, and
from the point of view of the outside OS I have only two files - VM and
Image.

A variant of Occam's razor for computers - concepts should not be
duplicated.  The concept of a file is redundant when we have the concept
of an object.  Let's deprecate it...

Russell




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