[sugar] Squeak / Etoys RPMs

[Ivan Krstić]

Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> You know what's my real worry? I'm worried that when the storage system
> will be spec'd out (or even worst implemented) we will find out it's not
> what we need to implement the user experience design. And the reason I'm
> really worried is that I *care* about it because I'm sure you guys are
> building a great piece of software.

I wanted to release specs for the storage system a few weeks ago, but
this got sidetracked because of work on security, the docformat, and
infrastructure.

I'm going to try very hard to release the spec before next week. That
said, I want to caution against the seemingly growing trend to consider
*everything* a part of the user experience design. I can see the appeal
in it, but it's simply misguided and incorrect. We're building a
software stack. As with any other stack, it has a top and a bottom.
Sugar is the top, and while many of the underlying levels must thus be
designed with user experience as the primary concern, the fact is that
many of the bottom layers simply don't.

The kernel is not designed with regard to user experience. Neither is
TCP/IP. The document store is a general, relatively low-level interface
whose actual operation is largely defined by how it's used; just as you
don't think to go and implement a new NAND flash filesystem with user
experience in mind (what does that even mean?), so it's the case with
the docstore.

In terms of my expectations, I don't think we'll have anything more than
the wiki/eBook reader using the store for B-test. This is fine: we can
move things over as necessary afterwards, and I'm happy to revisit the
docstore design decisions if -- by some series of revelations that I
can't quite fathom -- it turns out that its design is incompatible with
the 'user experience' considerations.

Let's not make user experience into another kind of Kool-Aid.

-- 
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D