(moving discussion to squeak-dev)

On 26.03.2009, at 08:14, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:

> On Thursday 26 Mar 2009 3:14:20 am Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> Well, the Etoys install should have created a menu entry so you just
>> click that and it should work.
> This only launches Squeak.

Etoys, to be precise.

> Mac users are used to opening *.image files by drag-n-drop on the  
> Squeak app.

Correction: Mac *developers* do that. And that also works on Windows  
if I am not mistaken.

Besides, I think double-clicking the image is used even more often, or  
choosing "Open with ..." if you have multiple VMs installed.

> If there are only a few images, the following
> steps will create a desktop button to launch an image directly:
>
> 1. Right click on Desktop, click on "Create Launcher..."
> 2. Enter Name: "My Development Image"
>            Command: "squeak path-to-my.image"
> 3. Click on Icon and pick a good graphic for your desktop button.
> 4. Click OK.
>
> A button will now appear on your desktop. Clicking it will open the  
> image in
> squeak directly.


Again, I'm pretty sure someone already made a desktop entry that  
allows to double-click an image. Did you try the Ubuntu squeak  
package? I have also seen a setup where the "Squeak" menu entry opened  
a file dialog that let you choose an image.

Anyway, the first thing is to tell the system about Squeak-related  
files. On Linux that generally works by MIME types. For that, you need  
to put an xml file like this into /usr/share/mime/packages/ :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime- 
info">
    <mime-type type="application/x-squeak-project">
      <comment>Squeak Project</comment>
      <glob pattern="*.pr"/>
    </mime-type>
    <mime-type type="application/x-squeak-image">
      <comment>Squeak Image</comment>
      <glob pattern="*.image"/>
    </mime-type>
    <mime-type type="application/x-squeak-object">
      <comment>Squeak Object</comment>
      <glob pattern="*.sqo"/>
    </mime-type>
    <mime-type type="application/x-squeak-archive">
      <sub-class-of type="application/zip"/>
      <comment>Squeak Archive</comment>
      <glob pattern="*.sar"/>
    </mime-type>
</mime-info>

And then you can associate a MIME type with an application or script  
to open it. I don't remember the details though.

IMHO the Squeakers on Linux should contact the packagers of their  
favorite distribution and let them know what they would expect the  
package to do. As long as every developer only installs their own VMs  
and images, it is much harder than necessary for newcomers to get  
their system going. The days when every Linux user was an expert who  
knew how to compile their software and maintain the system are long  
gone, they now expect things to work out-of-the-box. Which is a good  
thing, IMHO.

There already are Squeak packages in (at least) Debian, Ubuntu,  
Fedora, Mandriva, and I non-official packages for at least Gentoo and  
ArchLinux. We should help those packagers because they considerably  
increase the visibility of Squeak in the wider free software community  
and its usefulness to users. Ideas how to do that are highly welcome.

- Bert -