Hi 

I do not really appreciate when people talked about the work of others
without really knowing about what they talk.
It is always nice to critic things because critics are easy. Esaier than
doing something. But you are really going too far. I have to reply

The fact that you do not like our book is your problem. But at least you
should respect the work of people (but for critics that do not know what
effort means this is difficult).

> 2. There are chapters 2, 3, 7 and 11.
> I had a look on chapter 2.
> I am NOT extremely fascinated. Why, for goodness sake, when offering a PDF
> version to the potential readers the colours have been squashed into grey
> levels? This is much less pleasant to read.

Do you know the cost of printing all the pages of a book in color?
We decided to make a book that people can buy. This is why pdf are in grey.
The french price is 186 frcs for 320 pages. I earned personally less than 2
frcs per book. So if I compare the amount of hours I spent I should have
really made something else.
 
> 3. More about this chapter. It is called "Guided visit of some applications",
> and there are plenty of window captures included. The "Squeak worlds", some
> "funny/sad faces", some applications/browsers, etc. The text therein is
> readable when the pdf page is zoomed, but I doubt a little that in the
> printed version the reader manages to read those pages overloaded with
> small font text. (But the Authors tested this, didn't they...?)
> 
> I understand that this chapter is mainly an advertisement: "look what cool
> applications have been written in squeak", but I must say that it is a pity
> that the Authors just copied nice pictures produced by somebody else, not
> wishing to work themselves on the visual layer of the presentation.

What are you saying? We copied what? Can you argue before I become really
mad at you? We did not copy anything. We presented what was in the image.
I do not really see your point.

> 4. The same in chapter 3. Just snapshots of browsers, etc. The only
> "non-standard"
> picture is a - rather schizoid, let's admit it - picture of rotated system
> browser.

I'm really starting to think that you are this kind of guy that have a big
mouth and really good at criticising.....
Have you ever see the Squeak 2.8 demo.

> 5. Chapter 11. The chapter begins with a copy of the tutorial "Fun with the
> Morphic Graphics System" by John Maloney. Was it really necessary to start
> with something written by somebody else?
> And then we see what? Alignment Morphs. First example, with four circles:
> 
> AlignmentMorph newRow
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 40 at 40; color: Color red);
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 50 at 50; color: Color yellow);
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 60 at 60; color: Color green);
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 70 at 70; color: Color blue);
> position: 20 at 20; 
> openInWorld
> 
> And what we read on the page: http://swikimirror.squeakspace.com/721.html
> (Hannes Hirzel, Sept. 1999) :
> 
> AlignmentMorph newRow
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 40 at 40; color: Color red);
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 50 at 50; color: Color yellow);
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 60 at 60; color: Color green);
> addMorph: (EllipseMorph new extent: 70 at 70; color: Color blue);
> position: 20 at 20;
> openInWorld
> 
> The Authors didn't even change the colours or the position.
> 
> MoviePlayerMorph example:
> 
> | ps zps f32 out ff |
> out := FileStream newFileNamed: 'luxo2.movie'.
> out binary.
> ...
> 
> Here you are, find it on swiki 978.
> (The shown Luxo frames used to be distributed here:
> http://software.freepage.de/cronos/download/HowSqMovie.zip ,
> but today I didn't find them )
> 
> ==========================
> I skip the rest...
> 
> I think sincerely that such a book is badly needed, and it will surely be
> useful. Stéphane Ducasse and Xavier Briffault filled-up an "ecological niche",
> especially useful for French students who obviously prefer to avoid reading
> books in English if French is available.

I think that you are extremely insulting.
Xavier spent hours on writing his book. I helped him to present the syntax ,
object model and reflection in Squeak. The editor of Eyrolles pushed the
project much more than she should have. Eyrolles is taking a risk to publish
a book on Squeak. This is not even sure that they will make money in this
story and you *(&^*&^&*^&*^ are just saying no justifyed things.

What is the problem of taking some example available on the web. All the
code I write can be used in any book.


> I believe that Authors payed an extreme attention to present Squeak well,
> although I am not sure how can they demonstrate that their book is better
> than something else. Frankly, I don't like when an author says such thing,
> it is up to his readers to praise him, you know what I mean! (Especially
> comparing the OpenBook initiative, with a printed book for 28.50 Euro...)

I earned 1.5 frcs per book. so do you really believe that we wrote this book
for making money. I imagine that you know that even lying on the beach I
could have earned more. . Should I really go in the mathematical aspects of
the questions?

Why don't you talk about the chapter on SUnit on the Refactoring Browser.
This is the first book having such a topic and on SUnit 3.0.
Why don't you talk about the chapter on reflective programming that covers
introspection, software engineering tools, simple analysis tools.
Why don't you talked about the excellent chapter on the object model,
the chapter about the syntax. (I took the examples in Squeak and in the
emails exchange in this list so I'm certainly stealing something to
somebody...If an author recognizes its code contact me I will give him a
percentage based on the character used).

Why don't you speak about the excellent chapter on concurrency. and the
focus on web. Sure we present IRC, Nebraska so we are certainly stealing
something here also.
 
> But I am a little disapointed by the amount of information copied from
> other sources. I didn't see the entire book, and at least I hope that those
> sources are duly acknowledged. Potential translators into English might
> otherwise put themselves in a somehow delicate situation...
> 


je ne vous dis pas merci!
Et j'espere ne jamais etre en contact physique avec vous.

Stephane Ducasse
Berne, Suisse

PS: I would be really curious to see what you made for this community......

 
> 
> Jerzy Karczmarczuk
> Caen, France
>