[Webteam] Feedback for "About" page integration

[Alex Perez]

Brad Fuller wrote:
> Larry Trutter wrote:
>   
>> Here is the first draft of my attempt to integrate two different "About"
>> page into one. I don't have access to the test web page so I post the
>> text here. I did not make any attempt to rewrite the whole thing. So I
>> have been conservative with the changes.
>>
>> If any of the information is out of date, let me know and I can update
>> it. There are several sections that I did not modify so I did not
>> include those texts.
>>
>> So any feedback on this are welcome.
>>
>> thanks,
>> Larry Trutter
>>     
>
> Some comments:
>
>
> ===
> 1. I would removed "especially" from this sentence:
> Smalltalk is deeply inspired by ideas from especially Simula, Sketchpad
> and Lisp and even today Smalltalk sets the bar for object oriented
> dynamically strongly typed interactive languages and environments.
>
>   
Furthermore, direct links to Wikipedia pages for Simula, Sketchpad, and 
Lisp would be a good idea, as surely many people have never heard of 
them before, or if they have, might like to learn more.
> ===
> 2. It would be nice to explain, in a couple of words within the
> sentence, what "real live objects" mean:
>
> "You may be familiar with other open source languages like Ruby or
> Python, but Squeak takes these concepts much, much further offering a
> true uniform fully reflective environment - real live objects."
>   

Yes....especially on an about page, if someone is taking the trouble to 
read it, chances are they don't know a heck of a lot about it...
> ===
> 3.I like to have bullet points of the basics right up front. So, instead
> of talking about the "kernel" in the "What is Squeak", I think it is
> better to place overall features such as (but not necessarily):
>
> ---
> Other noteworthy aspects of Squeak include:
>
>     * real-time sound and music synthesis written entirely in Smalltalk
>     * extensions of BitBlt to handle color of any depth and anti-aliased
> image rotation and scaling
>     * network access support that allows simple construction of servers
> and other useful facilities
>     * bit-identical on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Unix, and others)
>     * a compact object format that typically requires only a single word
> of overhead per object
>     * a simple yet efficient incremental garbage collector for 32-bit
> direct pointers with efficient bulk-mutation of objects
> ---
>   
Right. The American/Anglo-journalistic-style "start with essentials, 
then deeper analysis or explanation" is useful here.
> I like to see a point or two about education too.
>
> ===
> 4. It'd be nice to know what "reflective" means. It's not a term that is
> used often.
>   
Yes, once again, a link to 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_%28computer_science%29 would 
probably do a better job of explaining it than anyone here would.
> ===
> 5. This sentence is redundant. I suggest removing:
>
> Each release includes platform-independent support for color, sound, and
> network access, with complete source code.
>
> ===
> 6. I'd change:
>
>  -- to include even the VM.
>
> to
>
>  -- including the virtual machine.
>
> ===
> 7. I would rewrite the paragraph starting with:
>
> Squeak extends the fundamental Smalltalk philosophy...
>
> It has several different ideas and could use rewriting and separation.
> For instance the next paragraph:
>
> "Squeak runs bit-identical images across..."
>
> can be merged with a few sentences of this paragraph.
>
>
> ===
> 8. I never thought the "Philosophy" section made any sense toward the
> philosophy of Squeak. Squeak carries on the torch that Smalltalk lit in
> the 70s. I would think that a summary of Alan's "The Early History of
> Smalltalk", about the concept of objects and especially focusing on
> children and learning would be better here.
>
> Generally, I would like to see more about education threaded throughout
> the text.
>
> Thanks for taking on the challenge, Larry. It's a tough one!
>
>
>   
>> The following sections were left intact:
>>  About
>>  What it is not
>>  A Brief History of Squeak
>>  Squeak is Free, with a Liberal License
>>  Squeak Support
>>
>> The following sections are changed/integrated:
>>
>> What is Squeak?
>> When Smalltalk was created more than 35 years ago it defined the term
>> object orientation and is the first language in which everything is
>> built from objects. Smalltalk is deeply inspired by ideas from
>> especially Simula, Sketchpad and Lisp and even today Smalltalk sets the
>> bar for object oriented dynamically strongly typed interactive languages
>> and environments.
>>
>> You may be familiar with other open source languages like Ruby or
>> Python, but Squeak takes these concepts much, much further offering a
>> true uniform fully reflective environment - real live objects.
>>
>> The Squeak kernel includes:
>> ·    A largely Smalltalk-80 and ANSI Smalltalk X3J20 compatible language
>> and base libraries
>> ·    A fast virtual machine written in a subset of Squeak
>> ·    A bit identical compact 32-bit direct pointer object memory
>> ·    An efficient incremental hybrid generation scavenging mark and
>> sweep garbage collector supporting bulk-mutation of objects
>> ·    A virtual machine plugin system with plugins for most parts outside
>> the core like networking, file I/O, sound and graphics
>> ·    Bit-identical execution including graphics on all major computing
>> platforms including most versions of Windows, MacOS and Unix/Linux, OS/2
>> Warp and RiscOS. And if your platform wasn't included in that list,
>> Squeak is easy to port.
>>
>> On top of this there are class libraries and virtual machine plugins for
>> very advanced multimedia including anti-aliased 2D and accelerated 3D
>> graphics, real-time sound and music synthesis, MPEG2 video and much
>> more. In addition, Squeak has one of the most advanced fully reflective
>> development environments ever created with over 600 addon packages
>> available for single click download and installation.
>>
>> Squeak is available for free via the Internet, at this and other sites.
>> Each release includes platform-independent support for color, sound, and
>> network access, with complete source code.
>> Originally developed on the Macintosh, members of its user community
>> have since ported it to numerous other platforms including Windows NT,
>> XP Windows CE (it runs on the Cassiopeia and the HP320LX), all common
>> flavors of UNIX, Acorn RiscOS, and a bare chip (the Mitsubishi M32R/D).
>>
>>
>> What is Cool about Squeak
>> "The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution
>> hasn't started yet. Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into
>> bad defacto standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations
>> of incomplete ideas."
>> - Alan Kay
>>
>> Our diverse and very active community includes teachers, students,
>> business application developers, researchers, music performers,
>> interactive media artists, web developers and many others. We use Squeak
>> for a wide variety of computing tasks, ranging from child education to
>> innovative research in computer science, or creation of advanced dynamic
>> web sites using the highly acclaimed continuation based Seaside framework.
>>
>> Squeak extends the fundamental Smalltalk philosophy of complete openness
>> -- where everything is available to see, understand, modify, and extend
>> for whatever purpose -- to include even the VM. It is a genuine,
>> complete, compact, efficient and robust Smalltalk environment. It is not
>> specialized for any particular hardware/OS platform. Porting is easy --
>> you are not fighting entrenched platform/OS dependencies to move to a
>> new system or configuration. It has essentially been put into the public
>> domain - greatly broadening potential interest, and potential
>> applications. The core team behind Squeak includes Dan Ingalls, Alan
>> Kay, Ted Kaehler, and Scott Wallace. All of this has attracted many of
>> the best and most experienced Smalltalk programmers and implementers in
>> the world.
>> Squeak stands alone as a practical Smalltalk in which a developer,
>> researcher, professor, or motivated student can examine source code for
>> every part of the system, including graphics primitives and the virtual
>> machine itself. One can make changes immediately and without needing to
>> see or deal with any language other than Smalltalk.
>>
>> Squeak runs bit-identical images across its entire portability base,
>> greatly facilitating collaboration in diverse environments. Any image
>> file will run on any interpreter even if it was saved on completely
>> different hardware, with a completely different OS (or no OS at all!).
>>
>>
>> Philosophy
>> Squeak is an open, highly-portable Smalltalk implementation whose
>> virtual machine is written entirely in Smalltalk, making it easy to
>> debug, analyze, and change. To achieve practical performance, a
>> translator produces an equivalent C program whose performance is
>> comparable to commercial Smalltalks.
>>
>> The current Squeak interpreter combines a classical Smalltalk bytecode
>> interpreter with a simple yet efficient 32-bit direct-pointer object
>> memory and incremental garbage collector. It also includes a BitBlt
>> graphics system that supports 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-bit indexed colors, as
>> well as 16- and 32-bit RGB colors, together with a "warp drive" that
>> supports fast rotations and other affine transformations, as well as
>> simple anti-aliasing. Other notable (and equally portable) capabilities
>> of Squeak include 16-bit sound input and output, and support for sockets
>> and general network access.
>>
>> The portability and sharability of Squeak, together with its
>> malleability (since it is all in Smalltalk, a competent Smalltalker can
>> change anything about it), has given rise to a lot of interest in the
>> academic community, and what one might call the "independent" computer
>> science community. By this phrase we mean to include people who are not
>> so interested in one language over another, or one OS over another, but
>> who have their own particular passion (numerical analysis, graphics,
>> distributed computing, music synthesis, O-O education, etc) and who want
>> a system that can provide the most flexible and immediate command over
>> experiments in their field of interest.
>>
>>     
>
>