Hi all,

I disagree with native windows. One of the features of Squeak is get an image 
and load it on any OS without changes with a proper vm. And I love this as 
much as I love the Smalltalk/Squeak way to develop.

The thing could be change with the windows feel. More like a normal window but 
with the squeak features.

As I said one day: 
http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/squeak-toy-or-instrument/

I'm founding my company, and talking with my girlfriend, I told her about make 
my projects on smalltalk. She told me:

 "all the benefits if you use squeak are very good but, what happen with the 
end-user? The end-user have fear about changes. You can make a ERP with 
Squeak?" Yes I told it. "And looks like other apps?" No "Then will be very 
difficult to sell"

I told her about XProgramming, OO benefits, blablabla all very beautiful but 
as She saids, 

"If you give an app to an end-user and this app don't looks like a normal app, 
this end-user doesn't want it. He will not use the app because look strange."

I have the same opinion I expressed on October 2006. Is good if Squeak have a 
different look, for the actual look exists SqueakLand with her own image. I 
don't talk about gray apps (as Diego calls it). But a lot of widgets inside 
the image, with a business look could be interesting.

Develop over squeak is fun, and this is important, but, the end-user doesn't 
understand about develop fun. "He" wants work, not develop, and "he" don't 
want "coloured windows" because disconcern it. I pay my bills thanks to the 
app's I develop. If I can't sell my app's, then I can't pay my bills. I don't 
like this way, but is the reality. The end-user is the boss, and you must do 
your work as "he" wants, because "he" pay.

If you offer an app in Squeak, and other company offer the same app, but 
developed over VB, .NET, Java etc.., he will choose the VB,.NET,Java project 
because the other is strange and doesn't look an app.

Now, some people will be answer with "Komanche+Seaside=Web Interface" but, as 
I said, (I think) the web interface is not the solution, not all the 
end-users likes web interface to work (a point of sale on a supermarket for 
example), and remember, "he" pay.

Is sad. All is around money, yes, but is the reality and, I think, all of us, 
wants work with Squeak using it on commercial projects for our own benefit, 
and not use it only on home to invest.

There are "solutions" (¿solution?) like wxSqueak, but seems not continued.

IMHO, If Squeak change the look&feel, could be the Smalltalk flavour thath 
make shadow to VisualWorks. And we, the developers (and users), don't need a 
pink debug window to fun developing.

Well, this is only my pesonal opinion (not the solution) about this (again). 
My 2 cents.

El Sábado, 3 de Febrero de 2007 22:00, J J escribió:
> I have been thinking about this stuff as well.
>
> Vista is out, and the places I read think Microsoft may have opened the
> door for some competition (due to trying to force DRM down everyone's
> throats, etc.).  If Steve Jobs goes for it, Micheal Dell said he is
> interested in shipping Dells with Mac OS on them.  Some people are even
> saying Linux may gain some big market share.
>
> So what this means to me is, people will be looking for an easy way to make
> GUI applications on these platforms.  I know nearly nothing about the MAC
> world, but in Linux the only RAD tool I am aware of is a code generator for
> GTK.
>
> Now in Smalltalk we always say (and I believe) that we can be much more
> productive then other languages.  So I think it may be time to prove it.
>
> I don't know how many of you have used Dolphin, but it is an amazing
> system. It only works on windows, but the GUI is wonderful and looks just
> like a normal windows app.  And what is more, after you build an
> application, it has tools to automatically package up the application you
> write and turn it into a MSI kind of package.  This includes turning
> certain parts into DLL's so that if you write multiple applications they
> can share libraries, etc., etc..
>
> And I think Dolphin is currently the perfect system for building native
> windows apps.  You get as much, or more speed then a VB environment but
> vastly more power.
>
> What would be nice, is if Squeak had something like this.  A great GUI
> builder (maybe it has already) and some way that we could use some system
> to turn an application we write into a native Linux/Mac OS package.  Well,
> native looking.  If you check what Dolphin installs you would find a
> smalltalk interpreter in there.  The payback with the installer is, we can
> then submit "binaries" to distributions like Debian for any applications we
> make.  The end user doesn't need to know it is Smalltalk.  If we end up
> becoming a big player in the Linux and/or MAC world, people will be
> *begging* us to share how we are doing it.
>
> With a rapid GUI development tool bound with the productivity of the
> Smalltalk language and the platform independence of Squeak we could have
> quite an advantage in the native UI space.  And I understand the concerns
> about making apps that do things that already exist, but what we have to
> remember is that all applications change all the time.  What a Word
> processor looked like 5 years ago is a little different then what they look
> like today and will be still more different in another 5.  Not drastically,
> but new features are being added.  All we have to do is keep up with the
> features they have and add our own here and there.  To take a page from
> Paul Graham's book, when ever a "competitor" adds a feature, we can have it
> the next day.
>
> Think about Mozilla for example.  They are pretty advanced, but it is an
> enormous code base in C.  They can't add new core features quickly.
>
> I still believe the web will play an even larger roll in the future then
> now, but we will always have to have *some* native apps (a browser if
> nothing else).  And if MAC gets a bigger percentage of the desktop market
> share (and maybe even Linux), this could open up an opportunity that wasn't
> there before.  And I don't think anyone can move to cover that gap as quick
> as Smalltalk can.
>
> >From: Brad Fuller <brad at bradfuller.com>
> >Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers
> >list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> >To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> >Subject: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend
> >Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:05:01 -0800
> >
> >All,
> ><sniped>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> >From predictions to trailers, check out the MSN Entertainment Guide to the
>
> Academy Awards®
> http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/?icid=ncoscartagline1

-- 

Giuseppe Luigi Punzi - Consultor

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