> I think MacOSX backward compatibily is a pretty freaking huge change.

I think you're confusing Classic (the OS9 sandbox), Carbon (the OS9 API 
running on OSX ) and Cocoa (the descendant of NextStep).  They run side 
by side - Cocoa has nothing to do with backward compatibility.

Where they share is in data interchange with drag and drop, the 
clipboard, AppleEvent support, etc, but they're totally different 
technologies.

Of course, support RTF didn't make any difference in the current status 
of Mac OSX, and since I can't find anyone you made that claim to begin 
with, you've set up a strawman.  I only brought it up because a major 
OS developed by very smart people has chosen it for rich text 
interchange, but that's all I intended to convey.  Apple makes no 
attempt to support the whole thing, just the 90th percentile subset 
that anyone rational cares about. Take it or leave it.

I'm in general agreement with part of your point - that we occasionally 
get new folks who assign us all tasks that they earnestly believe will 
"save" Squeak from oblivion and expect us to jump on it.  Perhaps this 
is one of those cases - an RTF "Notepad" in Squeak by itself is not 
going to change anything in terms of broad mindshare.  However, there 
is an embedded truth here - we currently have no reasonably easy way to 
import and export any common rich text documents between Squeak and 
common external sources - HTML at first glance might seem to work 
except that most word processors don't export HTML, and those that do 
typically generate solely for consumption in a browser, and even fewer 
import HTML.  Even then, HTML is a poor choice, and you can see by 
cutting and pasting from browsers into word processors.  One of the 
objections I've seen here about RTF, embedded proprietary objects, 
certainly applies to HTML.

This is not to say we should drop everything and work on RTF 
import/export.  We all scratch our own itches with Squeak, and perhaps 
the original poster will decide that it's important enough to learn 
Squeak sufficiently to write it - that's why I've invested time (with 
help from others) in XML, PNG, Jabber and other miscellaneous 
contributions that have found their way into Squeak in some form.  Note 
that almost all of them are about data interchange.

Perhaps gentle encouragement in that direction might be more productive.

-- Duane