Hi Stef, Marcus.

I only want to say that you have my support and that if in a future you 
berne guys are forced to make, lets say, an Squeak Berne Distribution, 
make it public because many people will join you.

To me the problem that the Squeak community always had, is that we all 
love squeak but we all love it to do different things and accomplish 
different goals. So it is very hard to make everybody happy and agree on 
something.

My devaluated and defaulted Argentinian 2 cents.

Regards,
Hernán


stéphane ducasse wrote:
> hi all
> 
> I have been discussing with marcus/alex and also thinking about that 
> after my remarks on andreas remarks related to
> changes, interfaces/ cleaning vs changes. So to avoid get frustration 
> from all the parts and to state clearly what is our
> plan for 3.9 we would like you to read the following and let us know. 
> Depending on the reactions, we (the guys from berne) may decide to 
> produce our own stream, because we must work too ;). But we understand 
> that other people cannot deal with a system changing. But in that case 
> we should draw the consequences.
> 
> Our part that we will work on for 3.9 is to get the system improved from 
> a developers point of view. We
> think that having a good foundation is important for everybody.
> 
> The overall idea is to slowly improve one aspect of Squeak: The idea to 
> have a System to build the next
> System with.
> 
> This has lots of consquences, one is that you want the system to be in a 
> shape that e.g., students that are not yet
> complete Squeak experts can start to do experiments with it on a quite 
> deep level, e.g., change the compiler or
> add a feature to the Browser.  Another aspect is to have a System for 
> research. The Traits project has been hugely
> successful, but it has shown that Squeak does have real problems if you 
> use it for stuff like that. If Squeak is supposed
> to be the system of choice for research like this, we need to fix those 
> problems, we need to make sure that the
> lessons learned from those projects get fed back into the system. (One 
> example is the change-notification that was added to 3.7, it is a direct 
> result of the Traits project)
> 
> All this does not mean that 3.9 will only be about that stuff: We surely 
> want to see e.g. the work of Diego beeing
> included, also any changes that other people would need are welcome.
> 
> For our perspective here what we would like to have: we put in (p) the 
> code that  will be in external packages,
> which likely will be "full".
> 
>     - services
>     - new preferences pane
>     - OB (p?) + browseUnit new version
>     - MC in the base image
>     - rbengine (p)
>     - shout (p)
>     - SqueakMap II (yes we want it)
>     - eCompletion or another package
>     - keybinding
>     - traits
>     - new compiler framework of anthony adapted by marcus to produce
>     not full block. Note that for Etoy the old compiler will still be in 
> the image so from that point of view
>     it should not have an impact.
>     - refactoring of systemDictionary. (see below this point)
> 
> We are sure that we forgot something but this is what we have on top of 
> my head.
> 
> Now for systemDictionary here is the situation and here is where we 
> would like to be after 3.9
> 
> In the past we created SmalltalkImage out of SystemDictionary in the 
> hope to have SystemDictionary be a nice
> and simple namespace class. Lot of stuff has been put in coherent places 
> (SystemNavigation, SpaceTally, Changeset....)
> But this will not work since people get used to add stuff there and 
> Smalltalk is a cool name.
> So the new proposal is the following one and is partly implemented. Note 
> however that it will require
> from us a lot of work so if you are against it please say it and we will 
> only do it for us.
> 
> from a user point of view we want to have:
>     only one class: SmalltalkImage/SystDict for all the image related 
> services
>     (VM pluggins, ....) but the namespace behavior will be delegated to 
> Namespace.
> 
>        All the previous code referencing Smalltalk will work but with 
> deprecation for the namespace interface.
> 
>  From the language programmer point of view:
>     there will be a namespace that can be used for experimentation
>     this class will replace the environment class of dan that is now 
> obsolete
> 
> We plan to proceed that way:
>     - create a class namespace with a new interface (done)
>     - delegate from systemDictionary to this new class (done but not 
> published)
>     - deprecate all the namespace method of systemDictionary (but we 
> likely want to keep them for some time)
>     - fix all the in image senders of Smalltalk as a namespace to use 
> the new class (using self environment for example).
>     (partly done over the previous years)
>     - merge back SmalltalkImage into SystemDictionary: the idea here is 
> to not have SystemDict as a subclass of Dictionary
>     - have Smalltalk pointing to an instance of this new entity, so that 
> everybody is happy.
> 
> 
> 
> Stef and Marcus
> 
> 
> 
> 
>