Hi daniel

This has nothing really to do with the language. This is just library 
improvement to support new kinds of Strings for new encoding scheme.
and this would be the same in any languages. If you save an object and 
reload it and in the meantime change the system
in java for example you cannot reload it (simpler solution).

> At the risk of sounding stupid, I'm gonna ask a novice question (being 
> new to this whole thing): Is this a Squeak-only issue or is it present 
> in any (all) other Smalltalk VM implementation?
>
> Granted, I'm following your message and agree that there are serious 
> implications to making this change. However, it's hard for me to grasp 
> that a language so mature as Smalltalk is having these kind of 
> issues/debates.

But the language is mature, the environment is mature, now we do not 
have a group of 50 engineers only payed to
maintain it and Squeak is not just a language but you have a complete 
environment and libraries. So... life is complex but fun and 
challenging.
But this is true that we should pay attention...

Stef