> I see it purely as a marketing issue. If typing is something
 > that's blocking wider adoption (whether justified or not),
 > and we have a way to fix it, then just do it and move on.
 > But it's possible that we won't have to, if the mindset has
 > changed (as Michael points out in his message).

The addition of manifest types, to a dynamic languages, is a MASSIVE 
change, not a marketing issue.  StrongTalk is an interesting experiment, 
mostly for the VM optimizations, but that's all it is, an experiment, 
it's not some production ready proven dialect that's ready for prime 
time.  Adding types to Smalltalk, is a mistake, and isn't in the spirit 
of the language, and frankly, imho, would ruin the language.  It's not 
something you can just add and move on.

Types aren't blocking wider adoption, ignorance is.  The wider community 
is generally ignorant of the benefits of Smalltalk, dynamic typing, 
image based development, language aware source control, etc., etc, etc. 
  Smalltalk doesn't need to come to them, they need to come to 
Smalltalk, and they are, slowly but surely, every major language has 
been moving closer and closer to Smalltalk for years.

VM's, refactoring, Object Orientation, IDE's, garbage collection, and 
extreme programming are all now common, a sure sign of the direction of 
the mainstream.  A few more years, and they might catch up to Smalltalk 
72. ;)

 > Another point about typing:  would the typing information
 > be useful for improving the developer tools (e.g. refactoring
 > could be more precise)?

Yes, and the cost would be much bloated and hard to maintain code, a net 
negative result.  I'm sure there's some interesting things to be gleaned 
from the StrongTalk VM, but Squeak, needs to remain Squeak, StrongTalk 
is the wrong direction.