[UI] Re: Promoting Squeak/Smalltalk

[Andreas Wacknitz]

tim Rowledge schrieb:
>
> On 30-Jan-08, at 1:20 PM, Andreas Wacknitz wrote:
>>
>> - Are there any actual VMs and images for ARM, MIPS or something 
>> similar?
> Why do you think a special image is needed? I've supported Smalltalk 
> in various forms on RISC OS (the original ARM supporting OS) for 20 
> years and can assure you no special image has ever been needed for any 
> particular processor. It's the OS that makes the difference - assuming 
> vaguely decent C development tools - and then only really to the VM. 
> Barring of course small matters in FFI type image support.
I wanted to point out that there is a mismatch between "We have many 
supported platforms and a rich class library / many packages" and the 
ability
to use all of the functionality on these platforms. I only managed to 
get ODBC running on Windows. Thus all other platforms, especially Mac and
Solaris have no generic database support.

>
> If you have a machine with a functioning processor and an SDK that can 
> compile a VM then you can make Squeak run on it.  How do you think we 
> got Squeak running on non-Mac machines in the first place?
>
I know that this is possible. But if we are talking about attraction for 
Squeak to new developers it doesn't sound so good to say:
"You can always port it to your platform or pay for a port" when a JVM 
is available for free and frameworks like JDBC and Hibernate.

>>
>> - What about Linux on non-Intel?
>
> What about it? Certainly Ian P. used to run a PPC laptop with linux 
> and Squeak. I worked on a linux/ARM machine for one job.
>
> Not to mention that realistically speaking there are only two CPU 
> architectures that matter these days - intel-x86-descended-whatever 
> and ARM. Pretty much everything else is now minor niche market. Cell 
> might possibly become important sometime.
Sorry, I have a different opinion here as I own two SPARC workstations. 
When your argument is valid, there were also only a few programming
languages relevant these days: C, C++, C# and Java. All others are just 
minor niche. Albeit Ruby may become important sometime.

>
>>
>>
>> Another, often discussed problem area for Squeak is its not standard 
>> conforming GUI.
> Which standard do you want? There's rather a lot of them, most awful. 
> Win3.0? Win 3.1? 95? XP. please, not Vista.... Mac OS-7.6? 9.1? OSX 
> 10.1/2/3/4/5? TWM? Gnome? KDE?
> Any of them could be implemented if people actually wanted them enough 
> to pay for the work.
Most of your mentioned GUIs have commonalities that makes it possible 
for programmers to create the "standard business" GUIs and for users to
actually use them. See some older discussions in this list for some 
problem areas Squeak's GUI has.

Andreas