I think I should absorb some of the blame for all of this 
misunderstanding about native windows and widgets.

What I meant is that it could be useful to make Squeak generate native 
windows IN ADDITION TO Squeak windows. I would not want to change the 
way the Squeak environment works, but, if we are to use Squeak to 
general development we should be able to present a platform-comformant 
look and feel. The World menu, like all Squeak environment menus, should 
go where it makes sense.

Someone - sorry not to recall the name - pointed out we are discussing 
two different things: the Squeak environment per se and ths use of 
Squeak as a general purpose development tool. Emulation may chage the 
way the Squeak environment itself behaves while platform native widgets 
would allow developers to present native GUIs outside the Squeak 
environment. I was talking about the later scenario, where native GUI 
comformance is more important than cross-platform comformance.

That is also why I said this later functionality should not be emulated 
inside Squeak but that we could tap the efforts already done on some 
cross-platform GUI toolkit like wxWindows (runs on MacOS 8 thru X, 
Windows and Unix) to generate native presentation. Emulation is a huge 
effort, but it always risks being out-of-sync with the most current 
native GUI fashion (MS, for one, embedded half of the Windows XP 
interface inside Office XP. It looks XP-ish under Win2K and Apple's 
Steve Jobs has thrown away the least-possible-noise mantra he used at 
NeXT favoring the ultra noisy X interface). Altough we should not 
overlook the possibility emulation brings to "fine tune" or change the 
"flavour" of the Squeak environment itself - this migh prove to be a 
very interesting endeavour in itself.

I am not familiar enough with Squeak to say if these are stupid ideas or 
viable things or how something like it could be integrated with 
mainstream Squeak, so, I rely on smarter people to answer the questions.


Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

>If Squeak used native windows, where would the World menu go?
>
>  
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