Sorry, maybe i should not answer that on squeak-dev,
but if the GUI and native widgets are the only obstacles, why don't you show 
them the free Dolphin version?
If you have commercial apps in mind, Dolphin licence price is not exagerated.

Nicolas

Le Vendredi 07 Juillet 2006 20:58, Dan Shafer a écrit :
> Please don't read this message if you don't have time or inclination
> for a quasi-philosophical ramble down Smalltalk Lane. I'm posting
> this here to share some experiences I doubt are new or unique but
> which I haven't seen discussed here in the many months I've been back
> on the list.
>
> I have been involved in Smalltalk on and off for a good many years.
> It keeps calling me back, like the Sirens, whenever I go in search of
> a new tool because the one I'm engaged in at that moment falls short
> or disappoints or just annoys me. As a result of this on-again, off-
> again love affair with Smalltalk and Squeak, I'm far from as
> proficient a coder or knowledgeable a designer as I would certainly
> be by now if I'd stayed put here. But I haven't been able to do that,
> for a host of reasons that are mostly boring and unique so I won't
> relate them here.
>
> Today I had a conversation with a colleague and friend I had referred
> to Squeak as a possible solution to a specific set of problems he is
> working on for a client. He spent a full day exploring Squeak and he
> came back with an observation that I found difficult to answer.
> "Why," he asked me in all sincerity, "is Squeak so ugly? Smalltalk
> has been around 30 years. It's been in the hands of great design
> firms like Apple and Disney. It's had IBM backing. Doesn't anyone in
> the Squeak community understand how a polished, modern user interface
> would help to sell their technology? Other than wxSqueak, which seems
> basically moribund [I disabused him of this notion in our
> conversation, but that was his finding on his own], there's nobody
> out there talking, thinking or working on a professional-looking UI
> for Squeak's IDE or for deployment of applications! What's going on
> there?"
>
> So I spent a couple of hours looking at the question he raised and
> what I *think* I learned is that because of the way Smalltalk
> implements graphics at some deep level beyond my ability to penetrate
> the image, modifying its basic UI to use a more modern and reactive
> user experience would be a major, major challenge. After 30+ years,
> there is no way to do native UI widgets (other than wxSqueak if and
> when it gets finalized and hopefully incorporated) let alone custom
> widgets that look polished and professional. I was able to determine
> that there appears to be a class (PNGReadWriter) that would
> facilitate the import of PNG images, e.g., to use as controls. With
> enough time and understanding, I could presumably figure out how to
> import a graphic (PNG or other) and make it behave like a button, but
> then getting it into an app layout would require another level of
> understanding.
>
> You get the idea. (And please don't spend time telling me how to do
> that particular task; I don't have the expertise or interest anyway.
> It was merely an illustration of what the problem appears to be.)
>
> I explained to my friend that Squeak has been used primarily for
> research and education, not for the creation and deployment of
> commercial applications where a standardized platform-specific UI was
> important. For him, that's a reason to avoid Squeak altogether.
>
> So with that (probably overly long) background, I can ask my
> question, on my friend's behalf.
>
> Why, after 30 years, does Squeak still appear to be a non-standard,
> almost toy-like user experience in the IDE? Is it the case that
> changing that would be far too complex to undertake? Or is it that
> the community of Squeak users just isn't largely motivated to worry
> about this subject? Or is the absence of an economic incentive the
> problem? Or IS there a problem?
>
> Thanks for any wisdom you can share. This is one of the two big
> objections I *always* get when I recommend someone look at Squeak as
> a possible solution to a problem for which it appears to me to be
> ideally suited linguistically and architecturally.
>
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> Dan Shafer
> Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
> "Looking at technology from every angle"