[Oz] Oz vs. Squeak

Thu Feb 1 15:13:41 CET 2001

I would like to add a few comments to this line of discussion -- but first
-- I am a complete NEWBIE to Oz, which influences my perspective.
Additionally, I am not a professional programmer, rather I am an engineer
that occasionally programs for a  professional need (in a WINDOWS
environment) and who has some personal programming projects (also in a
WINDOWS environment). I have decided to pursue Oz because I found the
multi-paradigm style, threads, and distributed programming environment
conceptually very exciting. It also seems that it could become a very nice
fit for both my professional and personal programming projects.

Now for the comments in no particular order -- 

I would also like to see the mailing lists combined for a couple of reasons.
1) I would find the discussions interesting. 2) It may give me some insight
into Oz I would not otherwise have. 3) It demonstrates that Oz is being
actively developed -- It is allows encouraging to an end user to know that
something he/she is investing time or resources into will still be there for
long time!!!!

I have tried to like XEmacs, but I also find the interface to be less than
desirable (I guess it is all a matter of what you get used to). I would like
to see a more modern type of IDE available; however, would it be necessary
to start one from scratch? ACTIVESTATE was mentioned, could their KOMODO
project (which is being developed as a cross platform IDE and looks
promising) be extended to include Oz? 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Calco [mailto:rcalco at cortechs.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 10:17 AM
> To: Denys Duchier; users at mozart-oz.org
> Subject: RE: [Oz] Oz vs. Squeak
> 
> 
> Please see my embedded comments...
> 
> >
> > mikki at ida.liu.se (Mikael Kindborg) writes:
> >
> > > To begin with, Squeak appears to have a massive user 
> community, and
> > > the creators of the language are very active on the 
> mailing list which
> > > has up to something like 25 messages per day. At this mailing list
> > > there are only a few mesages every month. I am certain 
> that a lot of
> > > activity is going on with Oz at SICS and other places, but as
> > an outsider
> > > it is difficult to take part in these activities.
> >
> > I completely agree and this is a matter that I wished to bring up
> > after the impending release of Mozart 1.1.1.  I want the project to
> > actively encourage community participation, in particular for the
> > development of tools and libraries.  While MOGUL made it possible to
> > offer your own creations to the rest of the community, it 
> did nothing
> > to encourage and foster the sense of a communal effort.
> >
> > I would like to ask Oz users for feedback on this idea:  how can we
> > work together to improve Mozart/Oz, develop a rich standard library,
> > discuss new design ideas, and collaborate on community 
> projects?  This
> > is your mailing list: let your voice be heard!
> >
> > > A related issue is the update frequency of the websites. 
> The Squeak
> > > site uses a wiki and is updated frequently by many 
> people. The most
> > > recent entry of the Oz site news page is dated Feb 29, 
> 2000. I visit
> > > the Oz site quite often, and I have a hard time to detect any
> > > updates.
> >
> > Yes, this is also a sore point.  I wish there were a better
> > infrastructure for keeping our site updated, but that requires time
> > consuming effort for which we don't have the manpower.  If there are
> > better suggestions (and possibly volunteers) we'd be glad 
> to entertain
> > them (the suggestions, I mean - volunteers will need to provide for
> > their own entertainment :-).  Keep in mind that many of us are
> > academics - while I spend a great deal of time and effort on Mozart
> > development, most of my research is actually in computational
> > linguistics; similar considerations apply to others as well.  That's
> > also why a community effort is so desirable.
> >
> > > What I am asking is if there is any interest in the 
> Oz-community for
> > > pursuing programming environment and user-interface issues?
> >
> > Yes, there certainly is, at least for UI issues.  Here in 
> Saarbrücken,
> > there is an on-going effort to create a GTK+ interface, and at the
> > Belgian site of Louvain, Donatien Grolaux and Peter Vanroy have
> > developed QTk which allows the creation of GUI's from 
> descriptions: I
> > love their approach and would like the user community to provide
> > constructive critical feedback (of course, this goes for other
> > libraries as well).
> >
> > As far as programming environment is concerned, I am interested in
> > tools that facilitate the development, packaging, and 
> installation of
> > Mozart packages.  I have currently an alpha version of a new tool,
> > called `ozmake' which is fairly intuitive and works the same on all
> > platforms (by which I mean also Windows :-).
> >
> > I don't know if there is interest in developing an IDE for Mozart.
> > Personally, I am an old hand with Emacs and very comfortable and
> > productive in that environment; but others might feel differently.
> 
> As a corporate prisoner to the Windows operating system, I do 
> find Emacs
> conceptually interesting but not very productive as a development
> environment. When you're used to Windows apps, Emacs' 
> paradigm is a bit
> disorienting. Plus, its windows implementation is pretty 
> clunky. You can
> always tell when Unix folks port programs to Windows that they have a
> certain disdain for it, and that shows in the end product. 
> For Windows at
> all events, I'm willing to build an IDE with all the bells 
> and whistles that
> developers on Windows are used to. While it wouldn't be cross 
> platform as an
> IDE, it would certainly highlight the strengths of Oz and minimize the
> Unix-y aspects of Emacs that would turn a lot of Windows 
> developers off. I
> can also work on integrating Oz with COM and COM+, and 
> eventually maybe even
> .NET. I'd probably build the IDE in Delphi or C++ Builder, 
> both of which are
> being ported by Borland to Linux. They'll include a cross platform GUI
> library, CLX, which means the code would compile as written on both
> platforms, but for the time being the first Windows version 
> of the IDE can
> be a straight Windows implementation. I of course would 
> provide the IDE free
> with source for those who want it, and I can maintain a 
> little "Windows"
> corner of the website.
> 
> BUT I need to get more familiar with Oz first (something I am 
> determined to
> do because I think it is a VERY promising language for longer 
> term projects
> I'm involved in)... and I'm in the middle of a development 
> effort now that's
> very intense, AND I'm (supposed to be) writing a book for Macmillan
> Technical Publishing on Automated Software Testing... so give 
> me some time
> to get started.... any encouragement would be helpful in 
> getting started
> "sooner rather than later" though I get the feeling that I'm 
> addressing a
> crowd that's not exactly Windows-friendly... ;)
> 
> Someday, I'd like to be the "Wizard of Oz" on Windows... for what it's
> worth. For an analogy, consider the work of Mark Hammond in the Python
> (www.python.org) community. He works for ActiveState 
(www.activestate.com)
and is primarily responsible for extending Python on Windows to do things
like COM, ISAPI integration, and so on.

Sincerely,

Bob Calco
Centreville, Virginia, USA
rcalco at cortechs.com

>
> In conclusion, please use this mailing list to discuss ideas and/or
> inform the community about on-going mozart related efforts.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier at ps.uni-sb.de
> Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
> Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
> Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
> 66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615
> -
> Please send submissions to users at mozart-oz.org
> and administriva mail to users-request at mozart-oz.org.
> The Mozart Oz web site is at http://www.mozart-oz.org/.
>

-
Please send submissions to users at mozart-oz.org
and administriva mail to users-request at mozart-oz.org.
The Mozart Oz web site is at http://www.mozart-oz.org/.
-
Please send submissions to users at mozart-oz.org
and administriva mail to users-request at mozart-oz.org.
The Mozart Oz web site is at http://www.mozart-oz.org/.