[Squeakfoundation]Visibility in the open source community

[Matthew Denis Richard Sloly]

Doug,

Re: " . . . the UI look (such as the SystemWindows) has improved modestly
from 2.8 to 3.0 to 3.2, if you've been following.  Squeak 2.8 started up in
the ancient MVC interface, which is a direct descendent of the original
Xerox PARC overlapping windows UI of the 70's, since you mentioned interest
in GUI history."

Sorry to say, I am new to Squeak, so have not been following that long. Do
you by any chance have documentation/screenshots of these versions of
Squeak?

Also, this is a long shot, but how hard would it be to simulate/emulate the
original "Xerox PARC overlapping windows UI of the 70's", as well as
applications that would have been typical to it? From a marketing
perspective, I think Squeak would benefit greatly from a more explicit
relationship to its roots in Xerox PARC.

In regard to the fonts, I figured that inertia was the reason for the
longevity of New York, and appreciate that fonts are not the highest
priority in terms of development. However, interface policy (though I
realize that this may be an overly conservative notion) is an issue if
Squeak is going to be marketed beyond the programming community. This is
something that its present community (of mostly programmers) needs to
consider carefully. Is this what you want, and if so what is the timeframe
and/or milestones by which you wish to achieve this goal?

Of course before form must come function, and design decisions must be made
in the context of applications. I would suggest the following: a word
processor and/or desktop publishing (in this case integrated with all word
processing tasks, as a framework for creating a full office application
suite, which would include HTML and email editing), Photoshop/gimp type
image manipulation and typesetting toolset. I am not sure how you would
segment and prioritize the development of these applications but I think
that they would be basic to general purpose work environment, and would be a
means by which to start doing the design work within Squeak, starting into
motion a feedback process between programmers and users of a real-world
(testbed) applications. In the interim, to make migration to Squeak easier,
it would be good to have a conversion path for graphics, as well as all
major file formats (text, audio, and visual), as well as an SDK to encourage
such migrations.

Anyway, this is all pie-in-the-sky speculation on my part. As I said before,
I am relatively new to Squeak, and I am not a programmer. My perspective on
Squeak is more limited to applications, so all of the above must be
mitigated by the bigger picture programming paradigm for Squeak, which would
be up to you guys.

Is there a way to keep Squeak flexible enough for experimentation while
providing a consistent UI policy where needed/desired?

- Matthew



----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Way" <dway@riskmetrics.com>
To: <squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 9:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Squeakfoundation]Visibility in the open source community


>
> Matthew Denis Richard Sloly wrote:
> >
> > Regarding fonts, I am thinking that it would make Squeak more desirable
if it could use existing font libraries for the Mac and PC. For instance,
would it be possible for Squeak to read TrueType or OpenType fonts? There
are many free ones out there.
>
> Probably in the near term, the Apple fonts will be removed and simply
replaced with some other bitmap fonts without the Apple licensing problems.
(Such as the StableSqueak fonts discussed on the squeak-dev list, which
include a NewYork-like font as well as others.  Although I don't think a
Times-Roman-like font was one of them... a donated Times-Roman-like bitmap
font might still be useful.)
>
> But that shouldn't stop us from also adding support for TrueType,
antialiased fonts, etc. (although it's not quite as trivial).
>
> > Font design is a very specialized field, but it would not be hard to
find someone who would be willing to design a special one, just for Squeak .
. . but then again . . . as you put it, "Or are there deeper [technical]
reasons that New York still rulez the image?"
>
> There aren't any deeper technical reasons that New York still dominates...
it's mostly just inertia.
>
> > I would be happy to help form a team of designers who could act as a
resource to the programmers, if there is a demand for such services. Please
let me know.
>
> Thanks for this generous offer... a team of designers could be very
helpful.  I agree that the Squeak UI is generally somewhat clunky in terms
of consistency, but part of this is due to the experimental nature of
Squeak... it has a *lot* of UI stuff (windows, widgets, morphs, EToys, etc.)
created by a bunch of different people.  There's a lot more stuff in there
in terms of random widgets than in most UI's (e.g. Java Swing).
>
> However, the UI look (such as the SystemWindows) has improved modestly
from 2.8 to 3.0 to 3.2, if you've been following.  Squeak 2.8 started up in
the ancient MVC interface, which is a direct descendent of the original
Xerox PARC overlapping windows UI of the 70's, since you mentioned interest
in GUI history.
>
> I think that this UI improvement can continue, especially as more people
become interested in Squeak for practical uses.
>
> - Doug Way
>   dway@riskmetrics.com
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