>From: "Bill Schwab" <BSchwab at anest.ufl.edu>
>Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Subject: Re: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing thetrend
>Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2007 10:17:04 -0500
>
>JJ,
>
>It does seem as though while you are not asking for native code, you are
>asking for native widgets.  There are times when it would be useful
>(appropriate is probably a better word), but I am more concerned about
>having emulated widgets with a robust (with respect to end users) feel.

I'm not as concerned about how it happens (native widgets, working directly 
in Morphic), as being able to do it.  And we are probably fairly close now.

>I can summarize as follows: I do not disagree with your goal of having
>access to native widgets.  I am saying that I think it is less important
>than getting morphic right.  Rob's wxSqueak has promise, but more than
>the widgets themselves, I want to have the MVP framework for Squeak.

I agree.  The MVP framework in Dolphin is nice.  I didn't mean to sound like 
I would close the door to anything.  I don't know enough about Morphic to 
say it can or can't do all these things.

>You mention "native package tools of the host operating systems" - does
>that include MSI?  There was a time when I was _convinced_ I was going
>to switch to it.  Object Arts had done so, and I found the Automation
>wrapper for it.  Within a few hours, the cracks started to appear, and
>after a few days, I wanted my money back from Bill Gates :)  IMHO, it is
>so complicated as to be truly dangerous, largely because they sent a
>relational database to do a serializer's job.  Pretty pathetic in total.
>  It is also, for now at least, completely avoidable.  InnoSetup does a
>fine job.

Well, I wasn't even thinking about windows honestly.  I think Squeak could 
make a big impact much faster on the other two platforms.  But I think 
making it a plug-in architecture would be the best route.  Then people can 
put in what ever installer they want.

>I think you are low-balling Squeak's ability to deploy images.  One can
>package something that starts up with "the app" running.  Your users
>could simply unzip that, or run an Inno based installer, and get going
>in a real hurry.  If your users are developers, you can send them an
>image with the stuff already loaded.  Squeak's license does not stop
>you.

That's true.  I didn't think anything I suggested couldn't be done today.  
Just most of it could be made easier.  People can and do deploy stand alone 
applications now, but it is a totally manual process.  And it is also a very 
automatable process.

>One thing, your idea of zipping up the user's image for a bug report is
>not possible in general.  People will not knowingly send you financial
>data, and if you target health care as I do, it becomes criminal in
>addition to being unwise.

Well, if you are developing a health care, bank or similar app, then of 
course you couldn't use such a feature.  But I think there are applications 
that this would be viable, and you can stick a warning on about "sending 
this bug report WILL send everything your doing for debugging purposes", so 
the user can decide what to do.  They can also go away from their online 
bank account and look at some other site that triggers the problem.

I know we can't do this all the time (and maybe we can't *most* of the 
time), but the times it can be used will make debugging very fast.

>What you can do is log call stacks for errors
>and a little more on crashes.  I don't care for Squeak's tendency to
>overwrite vs. append to these logs, but that is easy to fix.  Then a
>user could be directed to the log for cleaning if necessary, and
>forwarding to you.  Health care presents some additional problems: what
>is in the crash log, and where does it live?  Shared drives are becoming
>common for avoiding such concerns, but if the failure is due to loss of
>same, OUCH!!!

Those are all tough problems.  But that lets us charge more for software in 
those domains. :)

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