@GregS

From what I've been able to make out of your ideas...I believe I have come across a couple of environments that should cater to your needs, both of which happen to be based on the Smalltalk language.

The first is Squeak (general) or Squeakland (aimed at school kids/education). Squeak offers one a complete desktop environment with it's own windowing and menus. It also lets you describe objects at a high level, some as simple as drawing them on the screen, and then writing simple scripts to control them. Squeak gets really interesting when you check out a project called Croquet which throws in many possibilities, such as a 3D collaborative environments (only works on local area networks atm). Squeak is available for free and is open source.

Second is VisualAge Smalltalk with the visual composer part of the integrated development environment. The visual composer lets you construct an application visually, using components that come supplied with VisualAge Smalltalk or components created by others (even youself since you can add your own components to the palette). VisualAge Smalltalk is proprioritory and a free 30 day trail version can be downloaded.

Also I think you're touching on what has been dubbed as Amiga Generation 2, which introduces the concept of services to Amiga OS. Where when on goes to develop an application, the developer has a series of services at their disposal, most of which are provided by the operating system with others coming from third parties/other sources. I think this is akin to playing with Lego building blocks, instead of contructing a physical object you're constructing an application that runs on a computer.

If my understanding is correct, you wish to be able to 'construct' applications rather than having to 'program' them?


Hope that gives you some insight

@blazs11
Thanks mate for your extensive and well researched reply.
Squeak although designed for kids is pretty close to the jigsaw assembly we should be expecting from an application environment.

Smalltalk I looked at many years ago, but I have not been able to deal with it in practice. The visiual editing part looks very much the same as what I was contimplating.

Croquet, is not what I had in mind, but whoa!! We need a "desktop" environment just like we needed a shell environment when we had a good "Desktop", but I beleive that it is a deadhorse, that something new is required (no realy firm ideas on this though -- Croquet looks interesting and from an angle I have not before considered. Maybe this is something we should be thinking about?

I have already been involved (as Beta tester) for almost a decade or more with MAID where these ideas have been put into practice with some interesting results. I was surprised as anyone when Fleecy started talking about task orientated computing, which has been something of a personal bugbear for some time. Finall;y it see,ms people are starting to look in the same direction which gladdens my heart.

I am hoping that Amiga takes advantage of the some of these emerging ideas (not my ideas but stuff that is about). If Amiga could become the home for this sort of forward thinking then we would very swiftly become the leading edge in the computer market.

PS @blazs11 just found out that all these are closely related technologies and despite Squeaks juvenile orientation is no slouch. SOrry to be so thick headed, this is actually combined more than I considered before -- Perhaps we should be starting to think in terms of a Croquet like interface for the Amiga (separate from WB)?

Last edited by GregS on 20-Dec-2004 at 11:33 PM.

_________________
Greg Schofield, Perth Australia

@GregS
From Croquet
Quote:

There are a number of reasons why we need something like Croquet today. First, the PC user interface was cast in amber 20 years ago. This was for various reasons: * The desktop GUI originally developed by Alan Kay and his colleagues was an extremely successful approach to interacting with the PC. * The emergence of software monopolies removed any encouragement to innovate on the platform. Compare a modern PC of 2004 to the first Macintosh shipping in 1984 and the major difference you will see is color. * The fact that these dominant systems were created in early bound languages made it impossible to easily modify the foundations of the system either by the developers or by third parties. Croquet was built to answer a simple question. "If we were to create a new operating system and user interface knowing what we know today, how far could we go?" Further, what kinds of decisions would we make that we might have been unable to even consider 20 or 30 years ago, when the current operating systems were first created? We decided that it was time for an existence proof that innovation could still continue and succeed on the PC. We felt that the very definition of the PC and its role needed to be shifted from a single-user closed system to a next generation broadband communication device.

I like this stuff:
Quote:

Simply put, a Croquet space is a virtual "place". In Croquet, a space is a container of objects, including often, the user. A good example of a space might be a child's play room. All of his toys are objects that happen to be lying on the floor, or perhaps put away. A child can always come into the room to play, or even to pick up a toy and carry it outside. In Croquet, Spaces can act like rooms, but they can also act as landscapes, or virtual conference rooms, or any kind of 3D container of any size. They can also contain things that can be brought out and used in other spaces.

Last edited by GregS on 20-Dec-2004 at 11:28 PM.
Last edited by GregS on 20-Dec-2004 at 11:27 PM.

_________________
Greg Schofield, Perth Australia

@Wiffy

>Hes talking about the lawsuit from Mr Bolton Peck and Mr Fontenot ( former employees ).

>The garage sale held by the old landlord settled that debt.

Do you have any proof of this statement?

I read from Internet that:
1. Amiga Inc must pay Mr Bolton Peck US$ 80 thousand.
2. Amiga Inc must pay Mr Fontenot US$ 37 thousand.

Total unpaid salary: US$ 117 thousand.

Is the result of the garage sale more than US$ 117 thousand?

What is the amount of Amiga Inc's debt to the landlord (rent payment)?

Does the former employees get the first priority or the landlord?

@asian

The only proof I have that the landlords debt with amiga inc was settled by the sale of impounded goods owned by amiga inc 'the garage sale' is that I know someone who talked with said landlord.

If you read it again, what I said does not map onto what you have chosen to interpret it to mean. Im sure I clarified it for the english-as-a-native-language challenged.

Enjoy your life

Dave.

Quote:

by tonyw on 10-Dec-2004 10:11:02 @DaveP I don't know what the law is in foreign parts like the US, but here at least, when you buy a bankrupt company, you don't *necessarily* buy their bad debts. Those debts - liabilities - are just part of the company's assets (although negative) and I have been an employee of a company that owed lots of people when it went bankrupt. The company that bought the assets "did not buy the debts" (their phrase) and hence the creditors of the bankrupt company had to wait for the liquidation before they got anything. This may have no bearing at all on the KMOS-Amiga Inc purchase, I just thought I'd show off my knowledge…

I understand your point about bankruptcy assets and liabilities. However, in such cases, creditors typically join a 'creditors meeting' to negotiate their claims before the liquidation process starts; this can sometimes result in settlements outside of court.

tonyw: Thanks for sharing that information! It does provide context on how bankruptcy works generally and might indirectly affect KMOS-Amiga Inc. situation, even though it's not a direct legal precedent to the case at hand here.