Squeak is the finest piece of software I have seen in ages. The look
of it however is not on the bleeding edge. Especially when you
download a vanilla squak version. It can be tweaked, I know. It
follows a somewhat different paradigm than "widget sets" and it is in
many aspects far superior to the capabilities of classic toolkit-style
programming. All true.

Actually I am not sure if squeak is ment for large application but I
also don't see why it shouldn't be. To me, the Smalltalk/Java story
smells a lot like the Linux/Windows story. Where will Squeak be in five
years from now ?

Apart from "growing software" there is also a need to grow a
community. The learning curve of smalltalk is initially quite steep. I
suppose eToys flatten this curve a great deal, but I doubt that these
are ment for industrial strength applications.

In order to offer some initial candy to potential members of the
community it might be a good idea to give squeak a distinctive
look. This has been done with Java's "metal look" and with Apple's
"Aqua". It does not have to be themable, it just has to look cool
enough, so interested people keep interested and it has to be
different to other known looks (well *that* is the case
already). *One good* look is enough.

There are some technical things to do, but this is not the essential
part. The important thing is to produce a fine piece of artwork which
parallels the fine piece of software we see here.

I was wondering if it waswould be a good idea to try and let some
designers do the artwork. Sort of like "free artwork". The rewarding
mechanisms of open source software should also work for non-software
artists. It should be possible to find some designers on the net, who
are willing to contribute.

If we have to stop thinking that programming is a matter of editing
text it might also include a larger portion of visual art. And isn't a
"look" essentially a design pattern ?