Andreas Raab wrote:
> Peter,
> 
> 
>>If anyone else feels I should shut up, I will. But as long as 
>>it's just you, I'll continue offering (what I believe to be) 
>>constructive criticism.
> 
> 
> Please go on. I've been reading this thread with a lot of interest. The
> only two things I am missing is a) some proposal of how the problem can
> be solved and b) the necessary steps (and comittment) to get there.
> 
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
> 
> 
> 

Getting modules nailed down seems like a very reasonable initial step, 
as Alan Kay noted earlier in the thread. That will help give some space 
to all the furry little mammals to play in the same world as the big 
dinosaurs without getting trampled, as it were. Once we've broken things 
down into modules, coming up with alternate look-and-feel will be a 
little bit less a matter of discussion and a little bit more a matter of 
"Scratching an itch," or "Put up or shut up." Until that occurs, it will 
remain daunting to move forward with such a project without coordinating 
with SqueakC, since keeping things up-to-date would be hard. So 
finishing the module project seems like Step 1 to me.

Also, I noticed in an earlier thread that to devise a way to allow 
separate OS windows seemed like a popular feature. I'll gamble and say 
that that would be a project not as dependent on having modules as an 
alternative widget set or look-and-feel. Anyone have an idea of how hard 
it would be? As great as Jim Benson's Zurgle project is, I would prefer 
to have the OS handle the windows and their frames, and have a set of 
very boring, wimpy, run-of-the-mill GUI widgets to work with. And I'd 
like to be able to subclass them in my own modules -- that is to say, 
the widgets should be done *in* smalltalk. And I don't want them to lose 
events, so they should be done in Morphic.