On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Alain Farmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(big snip)
I'm not sure that trying to drag this discussion over the the opencard
list is the right thing to do (not to mention the issue of reposting
people's comments without their permission), but since it's here:
> I am personally
> considering using Squeak to rapidly prototype
> FreeCard/FreeScript -- the open source HyperCard-clone
> group that split off from the HC-list many months ago.
Small correction: it'll be a year next month...
> > Scott Raney: You have to download (or install) a
> huge
> > class library to do anything in Smalltalk, and that
> > whole thing gets loaded into memory when you run
> > even a trival "hello world" application.
>
> Alain: Is this based on your experience with
> SmallTalk? Or are you describing Java and
> extrapolating from it to SmallTalk?
My experience with Smalltalk, and a lot of reading on the subject.
Triming the size of the kernel to the set of objects actually needed
to run a particular application was a hot research topic back in the
mid 80s. No good general solution to the problem was ever found.
> > Scott Raney: IMHO, it's essentially useless for any
> > commercial application development ...
>
> Alain: Is Disney out of their minds ? Do they have a
> habit of supporting un-commercializable projects ?
Is Apple out of their minds? Do they have a habit of supporting
un-commercializable projects?
Umm, let's review: Dylan, Cocoa, Squeak, OpenDoc, GX... The first
four have found homes with small third-party groups trying to keep the
dream alive. Disney's backing of this project means exactly squat to
me: their motivations could include just the PR value, or more likely
just capturing some of the brain drain that Apple is experiencing.
Those people may be of some use once they come to their senses about
Smalltalk.
> Alain: Where FreeCard is concerned, I do not believe
> that the adoption of Squeak would affect in any way
> our relationship with you (MetaCard). You are
> providing us with a licence to use MC for the purpose
> of developing FreeCard's GUI (a GUI that MC will also
> be able to use, of course). Meanwhile, Anthony is
> endeavouring to provide FreeCard with its own
> interpreter (an instance of his more generic
> NuInterpreter) from scratch. And now I am suggesting
> that FreeCard might want to adopt Squeak for
> prototyping FreeCard, instead-of or in-addition-to our
> two existing interpreters.
Oh, right. We've got almost nothing to show for almost a year's work,
and rather than actually make some contribution to actually solving
the problems involved or providing any leadership, you're proposing to
divide the group up into even smaller incompatible fragments?
Tell me, have you reviewed Eric's work on the GUI prototype and sent
him feedback and suggested improvements, or indeed actually helped
with the layout of any of the dialogs? If not, I'd say that would
have been a much better use of your time than preparing this long
"digest" of the Squeak thread from the HyperCard list.
Regards,
Scott
********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
