On Monday 02 July 2007 7:03 am, Chris Muller wrote:
> My dream is for a tiny Spoon image to be the starting basis for
> anywhere anyone wants to go.  Everyone gets to be their own dictator,
> and yet the community is held together by publishable / published
> modules (configurations) that allow rich-content images to be built
> with one-click.  Today these images (Dev, Croquet, Squeakland, et al)
> are pre-built.  Tomorrow (I hope) they will be defined as one-click
> loadable (Naiad?) modules loadable into the 10K starting image.
I see Squeak being pulled apart by two (often opposing) forces.

As a learning medium, Squeak needs to be simple enough for children to use it 
as a dynamic multimedia book for self learning. It would complement textbook 
and notebooks (and may even replace them over time). It could be used 
standalone, in a mesh network or connected to Internet. It needs to be small 
(SVG, virtual fonts?), multilingual (Unicode, UTF-8, indic, arabic support 
etc) and have content (e.g. Projects and Active Essays) usable by young 
learners.  Like TeX, it needs to be usable at all times and approach 
stability asymptotically. It is not aimed at a 'market' in the sense that its 
success cannot be measured in terms of profitability. Squeakland is pulling 
it this way.

As a programmer's workbench, Squeak needs more VM modules and application 
frameworks. It needs better tools for browsing, coding, debugging and 
tracing. Stability takes a backseat to features. It would be pretty useless 
without network access to updates and packages. Multilingual is nice but not 
a show stopper. It is used to assemble products aimed at specific markets 
(Plopp, Sophie). Profitability is important. Squeak-dev is pulling it this 
way.

I don't see  1) being a proper subset of 2). The communities are very 
different and the Land needs more than one castle :-).

Regards .. Subbu