Daniel,

========================
Assuming I understood correctly, I join Cees in expressing curiousity
about what you think about the current trends, and specifically what
makes you unhappy about splitting it into packages. If specific effects
bug you, maybe they can be dealt with better.

What I certainly don't want is to go on my merry way and get told "but
we didn't want this" a year down the road.
========================

I'll jump in on this one, because I am also _slightly_ uneasy about the current direction.  Ok, packages, and the ability to cleanly remove them is GREAT - bring it on :)  However, I would very much like to not have to trust Squeak Map, or worse yet pick though what is sure to become several hundred, if not thousands, of packages to build an image.  I want to download the whole mess at one shot and get going.  Being able to chop out things that don't interest me is a BIG plus.

I haven't said anything because: (1) the cleanup is a good thing; (2) if Squeak becomes mission-critical to me, I'll end up making tools that make it easy to do the things I find tedious.

Before I jump off the soapbox, I'll stick in yet another plug for analysis/scripting tools to go along with Squeak Map; in short, something that can tell me what I need to grab to "do this again".

The other thing (probably my current pet issue for Squeak) is that it would be really nice if read streams would throw an exception when asked to read past the end of their collection.  Not that I'm in a hurry to port it, I have a lot of code the depends on it.

And the third rail: the underscore thing.  It's always interesting to look at file names in Scamper, and while some find it offensive, I have lots of code that uses underscores to prevent collisions.  It works.  It's a cash cow.  Yes, I could fix it if I had to, but I really think that what should have been an optional convenience in the editor was allowed to soak into the compiler and sources.  It should be fixed; sorry, just my 2 asCents.

The general question to the guides is: when does stuff like this cease to become advocacy and start to become nagging/ranting?  I suspect that a big problem is that people suggest/fix, nothing happens, and they give up.  Andreas' idea of a Wiki or other repository for ideas could be an excellent start.  Some kind of tracking tool that lets "anybody" suggest, and only the guides prioritize might be better.

Thanks for listening!!

Bill


Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bills at anest4.anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029