Hi Russel,

>   I think you have hit the nail on the head.

Thanks ;-)

> UIManager sounds like a good place to start.

Right. Get it here: http://source.impara.de/Tweak.html (UIManager-ar.3.mcz 
is the latest).

> As for the cross-framework widgets what about making an abstraction of
> widgets stored in something such as XML which can generate a framework
> specific version of a widget or window? Note that is just a place to get
> started, No Thought(tm) has been put into it. :)

Yes, I proposed that earlier on IRC. The Squeak World Tour had some baseline 
code to deal with that - XML ui spec and then an appropriate builder for the 
different backends. I wonder if that code is still around (and if so, what 
license it might be under). That said, there isn't an intrinsic need for 
using XML - anything that doesn't refer to class names directly could be 
used; say something that just reads as:

    builder := UIBuilder default.
    list := builder newPluggableList on: self getListSelector: ...

will work just as well and might be less effort (yes you would have to fix 
up the interfaces to be consistent but that's certainly doable).

> And **MOST** importantly to *me*, this fits into the idea of a minimal 
> Base
> Squeak which can have packages loaded into it as required. If I run a
> headless image, I load the Headless package (HeadlessUIManager). Morphic
> image? Load Morphic package (MorphicUIManager). Tweak? ... etc.

As you might imagine I don't care too much about running headless - what 
would be more interesting (and an immense coolness factor) is if a 
SeasideUIManager would be capable of rendering a standard Squeak browser. Or 
Monticello. Or anything else ;-)

Cheers,
  - Andreas