One of the discussions about the upcoming 4.2 release in this week's
Board meeting was about what to include in the official image. There is a tension between too bare of an initial impression and loading stuff that is not universally needed. One obvious solution is to have multiple official images (kernel, plain trunk, funSqueak, web development and so on) and this may be adopted in the future, but it was decided that it would be more practical to release a single image for 4.2 which should be as close as possible to "plain trunk". Official images are not just code, however, but have included text windows with helpful information and even whole projects with neat demos. The approach of using demo projects to showcase the system's possibilities to new users can be seen in recent Etoys distributions, though in that case the projects are not actually in the image (which is read-only) but exist as separate files on disk and are loaded as needed. In the older Squeaks the projects were part of the image, but were trivial to delete cleaning up the user interface and releasing the little extra memory they were using. One alternative would be to include projects in the plain trunk image to show off advanced features not loaded into the image. The project could include a little button in the background attached to a script to load all the extra code needed to do what it is explaining. The user would have to choice to quit without saving if the feature turned out not to be interesting or to save the image and keep that code even if the demo project is itself deleted. If the community finds this an interesting option, then people would have to volunteer to build these projects. I am supposing this will be an artistic effort rather than a programming one writing the script to load the code is simple enough. What do you think? -- Jecel P.S.: here is a quick review of non code material in previous official Squeak images - 1.16: window "Welcome to ..." window "The Squeak User Interface" window "Managing and Saving Changes" 1.2: window "Welcome to ..." window "The Squeak User Interface" collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list panes collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic 1.3: window "Welcome to ..." collapsed window "What's New in Version 1.3" collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list panes collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow 2.0: window "Welcome to ..." window "The Squeak User Interface" collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list panes collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo collapsed window "About Squeak 2.0" collapsed window "Pluggable Views" collapsed window "Two Virtual Machines" collapsed window "Image Size" collapsed window "Source Code Updates" collapsed window "The Wiki Wiki Server" collapsed window "Stylized Text and Links in Source Code" 2.3 window "Welcome to ...." window "Getting Started" collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list panes collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo 2.5 window "Welcome to ...." window "Getting Started" collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list panes collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo collapsed project "Play With Me - 7" - Alice demo collapsed project "Play With Me - 8" - Fun WIth Music 3.0 window "Welcome to ..." collapsed window "Getting Started..." flash animated Squeak logo project "The Worlds of Squeak" subproject "Games" subproject "Graphics" subproject "3D" subproject "The Net" subproject "Scripts" subproject "Music" flap "Squeak" flap "Supplies" flap "Tools" Navigation Bar 3.2 window "Welcome to ..." collapsed window "A Word of Caution" collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" flash animated Squeak logo project "The Worlds of Squeak" subproject "Games" subproject "Graphics" subproject "3D" subproject "The Net" subproject "Scripts" subproject "Music" flap "Squeak" flap "Widgets" flap "Supplies" flap "Tools" flap "Navigator" 3.8 window "Welcome to ..." collapsed window "A note to students, parents and teachers" collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" flash animated Squeak logo project "SmalltalkIntroduction" flap "Squeak" flap "Widgets" flap "Supplies" flap "Tools" flap "Navigator" 3.10.2 window "Welcome to ..." collapsed window "History of 3.10.2" collapsed application "Package Universe Browser" flash animated Squeak logo flap "Squeak" flap "Widgets" flap "Supplies" flap "Tools" flap "Navigator" 4.1 menu bar window "Welcome to Squeak 4.1" collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" collapsed window "Working With Squeak" collapsed window "License Information" |
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 06:14:52PM -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
> One of the discussions about the upcoming 4.2 release in this week's > Board meeting was about what to include in the official image. There is > a tension between too bare of an initial impression and loading stuff > that is not universally needed. One obvious solution is to have multiple > official images (kernel, plain trunk, funSqueak, web development and so > on) and this may be adopted in the future, but it was decided that it > would be more practical to release a single image for 4.2 which should > be as close as possible to "plain trunk". Yes I think this is the right thing to do. Having multiple versions of the image is confusing (and also a lot of work to support). Many people who download the "official" image will also be interested in keeping up with the trunk, so making these as similar as possible is a good thing. > Official images are not just code, however, but have included text > windows with helpful information and even whole projects with neat > demos. The approach of using demo projects to showcase the system's > possibilities to new users can be seen in recent Etoys distributions, > though in that case the projects are not actually in the image (which is > read-only) but exist as separate files on disk and are loaded as needed. > In the older Squeaks the projects were part of the image, but were > trivial to delete cleaning up the user interface and releasing the > little extra memory they were using. > > One alternative would be to include projects in the plain trunk image to > show off advanced features not loaded into the image. The project could > include a little button in the background attached to a script to load > all the extra code needed to do what it is explaining. The user would > have to choice to quit without saving if the feature turned out not to > be interesting or to save the image and keep that code even if the demo > project is itself deleted. > > If the community finds this an interesting option, then people would > have to volunteer to build these projects. I am supposing this will be > an artistic effort rather than a programming one writing the script to > load the code is simple enough. > > What do you think? I think this is a good thing to do. Edgar's FunSqueak is a great illustration of this approach in practice. It provides a way to easily explore some of the extended possibilities of Squeak. Indeed, some of Edgar's work might be exactly what we need here :) I cannot personally make much of a contribution to this, but I hope that some of the folks with an artistic bent will take an interest. Also, if any of the FunSqueak content could be included, that might be a good first step. Dave > > -- Jecel > > P.S.: here is a quick review of non code material in previous official > Squeak images - > > 1.16: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > window "Managing and Saving Changes" > > 1.2: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > > 1.3: > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "What's New in Version 1.3" > collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > > 2.0: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > collapsed window "About Squeak 2.0" > collapsed window "Pluggable Views" > collapsed window "Two Virtual Machines" > collapsed window "Image Size" > collapsed window "Source Code Updates" > collapsed window "The Wiki Wiki Server" > collapsed window "Stylized Text and Links in Source Code" > > 2.3 > window "Welcome to ...." > window "Getting Started" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > > 2.5 > window "Welcome to ...." > window "Getting Started" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > collapsed project "Play With Me - 7" - Alice demo > collapsed project "Play With Me - 8" - Fun WIth Music > > 3.0 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "Getting Started..." > flash animated Squeak logo > project "The Worlds of Squeak" > subproject "Games" > subproject "Graphics" > subproject "3D" > subproject "The Net" > subproject "Scripts" > subproject "Music" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > Navigation Bar > > 3.2 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "A Word of Caution" > collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" > flash animated Squeak logo > project "The Worlds of Squeak" > subproject "Games" > subproject "Graphics" > subproject "3D" > subproject "The Net" > subproject "Scripts" > subproject "Music" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > > 3.8 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "A note to students, parents and teachers" > collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" > flash animated Squeak logo > project "SmalltalkIntroduction" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > > 3.10.2 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "History of 3.10.2" > collapsed application "Package Universe Browser" > flash animated Squeak logo > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > > 4.1 > menu bar > window "Welcome to Squeak 4.1" > collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Working With Squeak" > collapsed window "License Information" > |
+1 and +1
Keep the release artifact like trunk. Edgar! You should totally do this! The fun squeak images are the best showcases we have around. Something like that would be a really great compliment to a trunk release.
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 3:36 PM, David T. Lewis <[hidden email]> wrote:
-- Casey Ransberger |
On 12/11/10 10:03 PM, "Casey Ransberger" <[hidden email]> wrote: Keep the release artifact like trunk. Edgar! You should totally do this! The fun squeak images are the best showcases we have around. Something like that would be a really great compliment to a trunk release. I update to trunk often, could synchronize with 4.2 final release. Feedback of which projects old or new people like to see into !!! Edgar |
A "fun" project would be great. We should have a "serious" one, too.
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 5:08 AM, Edgar J. De Cleene <[hidden email]> wrote: > > > > On 12/11/10 10:03 PM, "Casey Ransberger" <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Keep the release artifact like trunk. Edgar! You should totally do this! The > fun squeak images are the best showcases we have around. Something like that > would be a really great compliment to a trunk release. > > > I update to trunk often, could synchronize with 4.2 final release. > Feedback of which projects old or new people like to see into !!! > > > Edgar > > > |
In reply to this post by Jecel Assumpcao Jr
I too always liked seeing the interesting projects demoing Squeak's capabilities. I'm thinking that everything would not need to be preloaded except for a short abstract of what each project is all about along with load and unload scripts.
In the latest trunk, I'm liking the 'Extending the System' Workspace with the various scripts for loading additional capabilities. I would like to see an easy way of unloading the stuff I have temporarily loaded to take a look at. I would NOT like to have loaded a project, then deleted it only to find out that all the code that was necessary for the project, was still hanging around. I do not like having to rely on closing the image without saving to revert back to the previous state. I often find I do some messing around in a Workspace that I probably want to keep, but that gets blown away too when quitting without saving the image. eg. if I load Seaside and Pier and play around with them for a few days in my image, saving at various points so I don't chance to lose my work, then decide I have no more use for them, I would like to do an unload/uninstall similarly to how I loaded them from the 'Extending the System' Workspace, and be assured that the image is back to the state I had before I loaded them in the first place except for what I've done outside of that which I want to keep. And yes, Edgar's work to keep the old interesting and fun stuff alive is really appreciated. Thx! Ken G. Brown At 12:16 PM -0800 12/11/10, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. apparently wrote: >One of the discussions about the upcoming 4.2 release in this week's >Board meeting was about what to include in the official image. There is >a tension between too bare of an initial impression and loading stuff >that is not universally needed. One obvious solution is to have multiple >official images (kernel, plain trunk, funSqueak, web development and so >on) and this may be adopted in the future, but it was decided that it >would be more practical to release a single image for 4.2 which should >be as close as possible to "plain trunk". > >Official images are not just code, however, but have included text >windows with helpful information and even whole projects with neat >demos. The approach of using demo projects to showcase the system's >possibilities to new users can be seen in recent Etoys distributions, >though in that case the projects are not actually in the image (which is >read-only) but exist as separate files on disk and are loaded as needed. >In the older Squeaks the projects were part of the image, but were >trivial to delete cleaning up the user interface and releasing the >little extra memory they were using. > >One alternative would be to include projects in the plain trunk image to >show off advanced features not loaded into the image. The project could >include a little button in the background attached to a script to load >all the extra code needed to do what it is explaining. The user would >have to choice to quit without saving if the feature turned out not to >be interesting or to save the image and keep that code even if the demo >project is itself deleted. > >If the community finds this an interesting option, then people would >have to volunteer to build these projects. I am supposing this will be >an artistic effort rather than a programming one writing the script to >load the code is simple enough. > >What do you think? > >-- Jecel > >P.S.: here is a quick review of non code material in previous official >Squeak images - > >1.16: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > window "Managing and Saving Changes" > >1.2: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list >panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > >1.3: > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "What's New in Version 1.3" > collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list >panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > >2.0: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list >panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > collapsed window "About Squeak 2.0" > collapsed window "Pluggable Views" > collapsed window "Two Virtual Machines" > collapsed window "Image Size" > collapsed window "Source Code Updates" > collapsed window "The Wiki Wiki Server" > collapsed window "Stylized Text and Links in Source Code" > >2.3 > window "Welcome to ...." > window "Getting Started" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list >panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > >2.5 > window "Welcome to ...." > window "Getting Started" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list >panes > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > collapsed project "Play With Me - 7" - Alice demo > collapsed project "Play With Me - 8" - Fun WIth Music > >3.0 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "Getting Started..." > flash animated Squeak logo > project "The Worlds of Squeak" > subproject "Games" > subproject "Graphics" > subproject "3D" > subproject "The Net" > subproject "Scripts" > subproject "Music" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > Navigation Bar > >3.2 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "A Word of Caution" > collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" > flash animated Squeak logo > project "The Worlds of Squeak" > subproject "Games" > subproject "Graphics" > subproject "3D" > subproject "The Net" > subproject "Scripts" > subproject "Music" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > >3.8 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "A note to students, parents and teachers" > collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" > flash animated Squeak logo > project "SmalltalkIntroduction" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > >3.10.2 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "History of 3.10.2" > collapsed application "Package Universe Browser" > flash animated Squeak logo > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > >4.1 > menu bar > window "Welcome to Squeak 4.1" > collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Working With Squeak" > collapsed window "License Information" |
Thanks David, Casey, Edgar, Chris and Ken for the feedback so far. It
seems this is a good quick-and-dirty thing to do for 4.2 to make the possibilities of Squeak more explicit to new users without annoying people who just want a clean image to based their work on. Ken Brown raised a very importan point: > I would like to see an easy way of unloading the stuff I have temporarily loaded to > take a look at. I would NOT like to have loaded a project, then deleted it only to > find out that all the code that was necessary for the project, was still hanging > around. I do not like having to rely on closing the image without saving to revert > back to the previous state. I often find I do some messing around in a Workspace > that I probably want to keep, but that gets blown away too when quitting without > saving the image. It is even a little worse than you think - if you close without saving, the extra code will be gone from your image but will still be present in the .changes file. If you play with it some more the next day and again quit without saving, then it will be there twice. Or am I wrong about the interaction between loading packages and .changes? Unfortunately, I don't have a good suggestion. Unloading in general would require some infrastructure that we don't have and certainly won't have time to build for Squeak 4.2. An option would be to limit ourself to showing off packages that do have unload scripts available. I have no idea of how much "fun" this restriction would eliminate. By the way - I think of it all as fun, even stuff like Seaside and Aida and drivers for object databases; not just music and games. In this case I imagine a typical project having a column of buttons on the left side like "load all", "unload all", "load seaside", "load pier", "load scriptaculous", "load seachart". Then you would have some text windows and/or bookMorphs explaining stuff and possibly some drawings. Another issue is how much to depend on online operation. In the past I have put in a lot of effort making Squeak distributions that would be useable to people with a CD drive but not an Internet connection. The fraction of our community in that situation has been significantly reduced (perhaps to zero?) in the past few years. So one option would be to have a single "Worlds of Squeak" project inside the image itself, with a bunch of subprojects actually living in http://ftp.squeak.org/4.2/worlds or something like that. Since the project needs to download code to show off whatever it is trying to demo, then having the project itself unavailable when offline won't be too much worse. That said, it might be a good idea to mirror those particular versions of the packages used inside the ftp.squeak.org/4.2 directory and always fetch from there so things don't break when squeaksource.org gets reorganized a few years down the road or some other site goes entirely off the air. Once that is done, having an offline "CD-ROM" mode wouldn't be too much extra work. But as I wrote above, it might be that this is no longer worth any extra work. -- Jecel |
In reply to this post by Jecel Assumpcao Jr
On 12/13/10 12:00 AM, "Jecel Assumpcao Jr." <[hidden email]> wrote: > It is even a little worse than you think - if you close without saving, > the extra code will be gone from your image but will still be present in > the .changes file. If you play with it some more the next day and again > quit without saving, then it will be there twice. Or am I wrong about > the interaction between loading packages and .changes? For this I use the attached for a while, sure could be enhanced and people use for not having unneeded info in the .image and .changes files Edgar Utilities class-updateFromServer.st (1K) Download Attachment |
In reply to this post by Jecel Assumpcao Jr
On 12/13/10 12:00 AM, "Jecel Assumpcao Jr." <[hidden email]> wrote: > Another issue is how much to depend on online operation. In the past I > have put in a lot of effort making Squeak distributions that would be > useable to people with a CD drive but not an Internet connection. The > fraction of our community in that situation has been significantly > reduced (perhaps to zero?) in the past few years. So one option would be > to have a single "Worlds of Squeak" project inside the image itself, > with a bunch of subprojects actually living in > http://ftp.squeak.org/4.2/worlds or something like that. Since the > project needs to download code to show off whatever it is trying to > demo, then having the project itself unavailable when offline won't be > too much worse. But this need people checking all works when we modify other packages. In particular, have MorphicWrappers working in last FunSqueakCog4.2-10423-alpha.8.image, but hangs in FunSqueakCog4.2-10774-alpha i build this morning. The idea of some like the old Bob SuperSwiki is very good. We could have the .pr files living in http://ftp.squeak.org/4.2/worlds Edgar |
In reply to this post by Jecel Assumpcao Jr
On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:44:44.004 -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr.
<[hidden email]> wrote: > Thanks David, Casey, Edgar, Chris and Ken for the feedback so far. It > seems this is a good quick-and-dirty thing to do for 4.2 to make the > possibilities of Squeak more explicit to new users without annoying > people who just want a clean image to based their work on. > > Ken Brown raised a very importan point: >> I would like to see an easy way of unloading the stuff I have temporarily >> loaded to >> take a look at. I would NOT like to have loaded a project, then deleted it >> only to >> find out that all the code that was necessary for the project, was still >> hanging >> around. I do not like having to rely on closing the image without saving >> to revert >> back to the previous state. I often find I do some messing around in a >> Workspace >> that I probably want to keep, but that gets blown away too when quitting >> without >> saving the image. > > It is even a little worse than you think - if you close without saving, > the extra code will be gone from your image but will still be present in > the .changes file. If you play with it some more the next day and again > quit without saving, then it will be there twice. Or am I wrong about > the interaction between loading packages and .changes? > > Unfortunately, I don't have a good suggestion. Unloading in general > would require some infrastructure that we don't have and certainly won't > have time to build for Squeak 4.2. An option would be to limit ourself > to showing off packages that do have unload scripts available. I have no > idea of how much "fun" this restriction would eliminate. By the way - I > think of it all as fun, even stuff like Seaside and Aida and drivers for > object databases; not just music and games. What I normally when trying out a new package is to copy the whole folder I keep the image and the changes file in. Then I load the new packages --- if I'm pleased then I go ahead, otherwise I go back to the copy and throw the new thing away. Not particularly elegant but good enough for me. So a note pointing this out in the 'Extending the system' workspace might be appropriate. BTW we might need another workspace of the 'Extending the system' type named 'GUI'. It could include scripts how to load Tweak and the Designer ( https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/trac/SqueakCommunityProjects/wiki/designer ) and some notes about Morphic and the event system (links to explanations, e.g. http://www.scribd.com/doc/6532118/Morphicfinal -- An Introduction to Morphic: The Squeak User Interface Framework, John Maloney ; http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2477, http://www.elwedgo.de/fileadmin/events_in_smalltalk.pdf ) --Hannes > In this case I imagine a typical project having a column of buttons on > the left side like "load all", "unload all", "load seaside", "load > pier", "load scriptaculous", "load seachart". Then you would have some > text windows and/or bookMorphs explaining stuff and possibly some > drawings. > > Another issue is how much to depend on online operation. In the past I > have put in a lot of effort making Squeak distributions that would be > useable to people with a CD drive but not an Internet connection. The > fraction of our community in that situation has been significantly > reduced (perhaps to zero?) in the past few years. So one option would be > to have a single "Worlds of Squeak" project inside the image itself, > with a bunch of subprojects actually living in > http://ftp.squeak.org/4.2/worlds or something like that. Since the > project needs to download code to show off whatever it is trying to > demo, then having the project itself unavailable when offline won't be > too much worse. > > That said, it might be a good idea to mirror those particular versions > of the packages used inside the ftp.squeak.org/4.2 directory and always > fetch from there so things don't break when squeaksource.org gets > reorganized a few years down the road or some other site goes entirely > off the air. Once that is done, having an offline "CD-ROM" mode wouldn't > be too much extra work. But as I wrote above, it might be that this is > no longer worth any extra work. > > -- Jecel > > > |
In reply to this post by Jecel Assumpcao Jr
I like the ease of button loading projects. It is almost like Android
Market except that everything is free. It would be interesting to see a dynamic package list with categories and most popular on top all with nice buttons to load and update the code. Dynamic to me means external so probably the most important welcome project for now is a link to squeaksource. Ron Teitelbaum > -----Original Message----- > From: [hidden email] [mailto:squeak- > [hidden email]] On Behalf Of Jecel Assumpcao Jr. > Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2010 12:00 AM > To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list > Subject: [squeak-dev] "welcome" projects for 4.2 > > One of the discussions about the upcoming 4.2 release in this week's Board > meeting was about what to include in the official image. There is a tension > between too bare of an initial impression and loading stuff that is not > universally needed. One obvious solution is to have multiple official images > (kernel, plain trunk, funSqueak, web development and so > on) and this may be adopted in the future, but it was decided that it would > be more practical to release a single image for 4.2 which should be as close as > possible to "plain trunk". > > Official images are not just code, however, but have included text windows > with helpful information and even whole projects with neat demos. The > approach of using demo projects to showcase the system's possibilities to > new users can be seen in recent Etoys distributions, though in that case the > projects are not actually in the image (which is > read-only) but exist as separate files on disk and are loaded as needed. > In the older Squeaks the projects were part of the image, but were trivial to > delete cleaning up the user interface and releasing the little extra memory > they were using. > > One alternative would be to include projects in the plain trunk image to show > off advanced features not loaded into the image. The project could include a > little button in the background attached to a script to load all the extra code > needed to do what it is explaining. The user would have to choice to quit > without saving if the feature turned out not to be interesting or to save the > image and keep that code even if the demo project is itself deleted. > > If the community finds this an interesting option, then people would have to > volunteer to build these projects. I am supposing this will be an artistic effort > rather than a programming one writing the script to load the code is simple > enough. > > What do you think? > > -- Jecel > > P.S.: here is a quick review of non code material in previous official Squeak > images - > > 1.16: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > window "Managing and Saving Changes" > > 1.2: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > > 1.3: > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "What's New in Version 1.3" > collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > > 2.0: > window "Welcome to ..." > window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Managing and Saving Changes" > collapsed window "How Squeak Finds Source Code" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > collapsed window "About Squeak 2.0" > collapsed window "Pluggable Views" > collapsed window "Two Virtual Machines" > collapsed window "Image Size" > collapsed window "Source Code Updates" > collapsed window "The Wiki Wiki Server" > collapsed window "Stylized Text and Links in Source Code" > > 2.3 > window "Welcome to ...." > window "Getting Started" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > > 2.5 > window "Welcome to ...." > window "Getting Started" > collapsed window "Play With Me - 1" - sliders, scrollbard and list > collapsed window "Play With Me - 2" - polygons and arrows > collapsed project "Play With Me - 3" - Live In Morphic > collapsed window "Play With Me - 4" - "Back To The Future" paper > collapsed window "Play With Me - 5" - advanced text flow > collapsed project "Play With Me - 6" - Fabrik demo > collapsed project "Play With Me - 7" - Alice demo > collapsed project "Play With Me - 8" - Fun WIth Music > > 3.0 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "Getting Started..." > flash animated Squeak logo > project "The Worlds of Squeak" > subproject "Games" > subproject "Graphics" > subproject "3D" > subproject "The Net" > subproject "Scripts" > subproject "Music" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > Navigation Bar > > 3.2 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "A Word of Caution" > collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" > flash animated Squeak logo > project "The Worlds of Squeak" > subproject "Games" > subproject "Graphics" > subproject "3D" > subproject "The Net" > subproject "Scripts" > subproject "Music" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > > 3.8 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "A note to students, parents and teachers" > collapsed window "ReadMe.txt" > flash animated Squeak logo > project "SmalltalkIntroduction" > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > > 3.10.2 > window "Welcome to ..." > collapsed window "History of 3.10.2" > collapsed application "Package Universe Browser" > flash animated Squeak logo > flap "Squeak" > flap "Widgets" > flap "Supplies" > flap "Tools" > flap "Navigator" > > 4.1 > menu bar > window "Welcome to Squeak 4.1" > collapsed window "The Squeak User Interface" > collapsed window "Working With Squeak" > collapsed window "License Information" > |
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