Zurgle as default Squeak visual interface? YES!

Timothy Rowledge tim at sumeru.stanford.edu
Thu Feb 12 03:03:05 UTC 2004


> I think the current Squeak-specific looks are fun and certainly 
> historical -- and should be kept as an option -- but let's move into 
> the 21st century, okay??
>  
Without taking away any of the praise rightfully due to Jim for Zurgle, 
please let us make sure that nobody starts to equate "windows look" 
with "21st century".

The _really_ useful thing about zurgle is that it includes nice 
renditions of all those boring ordinary widgets that make up most 
business applications. Having them available so that we can take on 
money-paying jobs for rather ordinary software (now how many of us can 
claim to have written non-ordinary software for actual pay?) and 
thereby support ourselves to do _interesting_ software is the real 
reason to celebrate. It would be very useful to also have a Mac OSX 
look, especially if it can be built on the same framework.

But remember the cost of emulating a commercial GUI; every time they 
change it you need to alter your emulation to stay in step. Not to 
mention that there are so many little tricks and corners to discover 
and emulate. Oh and customers will complain about not having 'real' 
widgets. At least, until they get real widgets at which point they will 
pine for the flexibility of emulated ones. See any archive of ParcPlace 
related widget emails!

Is zurgle good? Damn right. Is it a panacea? Nope, no more than tax 
cuts.

tim




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