Custom frames, dynamic skinning?

Hi Andy!

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/CustomFrames.aspx

Is that supported in Dolphin? Fresh look and feel :-)

Have fun, Guido Stepken

Guido,

> http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/CustomFrames.aspx
>
> Is that supported in Dolphin? Fresh look and feel :-)

Not like that, no. The linked project uses WPF which is available only
to managed code running on the CLR. There are apparently ways to allow
Win32 apps to call WPF content but they are rather involved (and would
necessitate the Dolphin VM being linked with the CLR runtime).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970266.aspx

However, it is possible to use layered windows to get similar effects.
Try this in a Dolphin workspace. You will first have to add the
Win32Constants pool to the workspace to get access to the LWA_COLORKEY
constant.

-----

"We'll use the Hello World demo because it contains a nice ellipse"
hw := HelloWorld new show.

"Turn of the standard Windows frame and force a repaint"
hw view hasCaption: false; isResizable: false; invalidate.

"Turn on layering and say that the white background is transparent"
hw isLayeredWindow: true.
UserLibrary default setLayeredWindowAttributes: w handle lcrKey: RGB
white asParameter bAlpha: 0 dwFlags: LWA_COLORKEY.

"The frame controls have gone so you have to explicitly destroy the window"
hw destroy.

-----

Obviously, if you use this method you have to implement your own windows
frame controls for max/min/close and resize.

Best regards

Andy Bower

Andy Bower schrieb:
> Guido,
>
>> http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/CustomFrames.aspx
>>
>> Is that supported in Dolphin? Fresh look and feel :-)
>
> Not like that, no. The linked project uses WPF which is available only
> to managed code running on the CLR. There are apparently ways to allow
> Win32 apps to call WPF content but they are rather involved (and would
> necessitate the Dolphin VM being linked with the CLR runtime).
...
> Obviously, if you use this method you have to implement your own windows
> frame controls for max/min/close and resize.

So, if i understand you right, Dolphin has language bindings only to
older, "unmanaged" code basis and framework.

As far as i have understood Microsofts strategy right, Microsoft is busy
working on .NET (mangaged code basis), being soon to be able to replace
that "old stuff".

From the strategical point of view, how do you plan to keep up with
Microsofts plans?

What could convice a decision maker to change over to Dolphin Smalltalk?

Do other Smalltalk companies have the same problem?

Could a standardisation of e.g. a OpenGL GUI (see Khronos libraries and
the outstanding FLUX2D/3D lib!!) resolve this dependancy?

regards, Guido Stepken

Guido,

I'm beginning to see that you don't know Dolphin at all. Do you even
have the free version installed anywhere? Did you try that code snippet
I posted or was it a waste of time creating it?

> So, if i understand you right, Dolphin has language bindings only to
> older, "unmanaged" code basis and framework.

Yes.

> As far as i have understood Microsofts strategy right, Microsoft is busy
> working on .NET (mangaged code basis), being soon to be able to replace
> that "old stuff".

Microsoft has been working on .NET since 2002. I have not seen a direct
statement that they are "soon" to replace Win32/64. It may be that they
would like to do so but there are *many many* applications that rely on
unmanaged C++ (virtually all DirectX PC games for example). Indeed, with
Win7 I have noticed a small, but perceptible, move in the other
direction. The appearance of two new unmanaged APIs in Direct2d and
DirectWrite is an example.

> From the strategical point of view, how do you plan to keep up with
> Microsofts plans?

If you mean, how are we going to support Dolphin running under .NET,
then we are not. At least there is no road-map to do so.

Listen, you need to be realistic here. It's possible, not being a
Dolphin user, that you don't know the history so I'll go over it again.
Object Arts is a two-man outfit who, since 1997, have maintained and
sold a Windows only Smalltalk. We deliberately targetted Dolphin at a
low price point so individuals and small companies could afford to use it.

In 2007 it became clear that sales of Dolphin under the existing
business model (i.e. free version and pro version costing $475) could
not support two developers so Blair took a full time position with
Microsoft. At that point it was plain that we would not be able to plan
large scale future developments (such as a rewrite in .NET - even if
that were possible) so Dolphin was effectively put into maintenance mode.

Over the past few years it's become clear that there is still a core of
committed Dolphin users who want to continue to work with the product.
That is where the recent "PledgeWare" idea comes from. The main reason
why existing developers would move away from Dolphin is uncertainty.
Uncertainty about whether the product (and the users' applications) will
continue to work in future. Uncertainty about whether Dolphin can keep
up with developments in other Smalltalks (like Seaside, Magritte etc).

The current idea is to investigate a commercially viable system
(PledgeWare) where Dolphin users can see that there is a route forward
to keeping the Dolphin VM running in future versions of Windows and
where there vibrant community support. The current proposal of new
version of Dolphin (7) hosting a shared repository and a 64 bit VM,
funded by pledges from the user base is meant to demonstrate this.

I think I have made a mistake and given the wrong impression with a
recent post entitled "PledgeWare: Aiming for a Dolphin Restart". Use of
the word "restart" in particular is inappropriate. I see now that to
most people this implies that Object Arts will go back to a series of
continual product release cycles financed by subscriptions and/or
upgrade fees. We simply cannot do this.

The real point is to get Dolphin into a state where the community can
support themselves and go forward. This means enabling communal sharing
of code and alleviating the fear of the VM not being maintained in
future. This is the "restart" that I had meant to imply.

> What could convice a decision maker to change over to Dolphin Smalltalk?

I'm not sure. Change over from what? If someone has an existing product
written in another language with developers trained in that language, I
can't believe anything would convince them to change to Dolphin.

If you are a committed Smalltalk shop that knows the advantages of
Smalltalk then you may well choose to stay with Dolphin or to choose
Dolphin for a new project. You would weigh up the risks against the
costs and decide.

I personally use Dolphin to run automated stock trading systems. I
recently had to choose between starting a new big development in a
language I know and love or moving to Java or C#. I've chosen to stick
with Dolphin and I'd like to enable other Dolphin users to have the
confidence to make a similar choice. That's the point of the current
initiative.

> Do other Smalltalk companies have the same problem?

Yes. There is currently no other Smalltalk IDE that will run on top of
..NET. The Sharp-Smalltalk that you mentioned the other day is the only
ST compiler that does so but, as yet, it is an experimental project that
has no IDE. Dolphin is still probably the best Smalltalk if you are only
interested in Windows (although Cincom's ObjectStudio team would like
to dispute this, I'm sure).

> Could a standardisation of e.g. a OpenGL GUI (see Khronos libraries and
> the outstanding FLUX2D/3D lib!!) resolve this dependancy?

I don't see how. OpenGL is a graphics library. Yes with it you could
build an interesting non-standard GUI but how does that help integrate
with a .NET code base?

Best regards

Andy Bower

Andy Bower schrieb:
> Guido,
>
> I'm beginning to see that you don't know Dolphin at all. Do you even
> have the free version installed anywhere?

As you know i have a "license-key" for a free dolphin license :-)

> Did you try that code snippet
> I posted or was it a waste of time creating it?

tnx. Seen.

> The real point is to get Dolphin into a state where the community can
> support themselves and go forward. This means enabling communal sharing
> of code and alleviating the fear of the VM not being maintained in
> future. This is the "restart" that I had meant to imply.

Hmmm. Q: Is Dolphin IDE itself written in Dolphin Smalltalk?

Another Q:

Do you really think, that a community will support and "go forward"
successfully without full sources of dolphin itself including the right
, freely to modify, whatever is needed to be modified?

regards, Guido Stepken

On Nov 26, 6:01*pm, Guido Stepken <gstep...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Andy Bower schrieb:
> Hmmm. Q: Is Dolphin IDE itself written in Dolphin Smalltalk?

Guido, please do not bother Andy.

If you really need someone to bother, please bother me and do not
deplete all of his enthusiasm.

Dolphin IDE is written in Dolphin Smalltalk.

rush

Guido Stepken schrieb:
> Andy Bower schrieb:
>> Guido,
>>
>> I'm beginning to see that you don't know Dolphin at all. Do you even
>> have the free version installed anywhere?
>
> As you know i have a "license-key" for a free dolphin license :-)
>
>> Did you try that code snippet I posted or was it a waste of time
>> creating it?
>
> tnx. Seen.
>
>> The real point is to get Dolphin into a state where the community can
>> support themselves and go forward. This means enabling communal
>> sharing of code and alleviating the fear of the VM not being
>> maintained in future. This is the "restart" that I had meant to imply.
>
> Hmmm. Q: Is Dolphin IDE itself written in Dolphin Smalltalk?
You wrote that you have a license key for DCE. Have you ever tried it
and used the browsers? Maybe you could answer this question by yourself
then?

Regards,
Andreas

Guido,

> Hmmm. Q: Is Dolphin IDE itself written in Dolphin Smalltalk?

Yes, of course. I thought you said you had a copy of the free version?
Surely you can see this?

> Another Q:
>
> Do you really think, that a community will support and "go forward"
> successfully without full sources of dolphin itself including the right
> , freely to modify, whatever is needed to be modified?

Well, yes of course, otherwise I wouldn't be trying. 98% of Dolphin's
code is open source (i.e. freely visible and modifiable). Only the VM,
which is written in C++ and assembler is closed.

If you are implying that the only way to take Dolphin forward is to Open
Source it then we may as well stop this conversation now. My standpoint
is this:

As a programmer, I think one should be able to make a living from the
creation of software and not just from the support of it (or from third
party advertising on the site that hosts it). In the same way as many of
the Free Software folks seem to be morally opposed to commercial
software, I am morally opposed to spending a significant amount of my
time creating something and then being expected to give it away for
free. Sorry, it may be old fashioned, it's just the way I am.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to use OS software and I'm happy to write
some stuff and give it away on occasion. What I'm against is the belief
that this is the only way software creation can work.

There are a number of Open Source Smalltalks out there already; at least
4 (e.g. Squeak, Pharo, FScript, GNU). I wonder if *any* of the
developers of these are able to make a living from it? Until that can be
demonstrated then I don't think I can consider the life style change
that a shift to OS would involve. Indeed, I very much doubt that the
world actually needs another OS Smalltalk.

Frankly, I don't really want to get into a big debate on Open Source
again because the last time I mentioned it I received a ton of hate mail
and various unpleasant comments on the web about my position on it.

Best regards

Andy Bower

On Nov 26, 7:01*pm, Guido Stepken <gstep...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hmmm. Q: Is Dolphin IDE itself written in Dolphin Smalltalk?


I remember reading something like that on documentation, couldn't find
it now. You can even find most of the "View"s of the IDE in "View
Composer/IDE Tools" and use them in your projects.


>
> Another Q:
>
> Do you really think, that a community will support and "go forward"
> successfully without full sources of dolphin itself including the right
> , freely to modify, whatever is needed to be modified?


Of course it won't be like having a full open source project, but this
shared repository feature excites me very much. It will definitely be
a big improvement and help keeping Dolphin more active than ever.

Maybe the announced features didn't excite you much but I think you
are being a little bit too pessimistic. If Dolphin 7 is going to
happen then we can say that Dolphin will be alive for at least 4-5
years more and, as a Smalltalker, this news makes me very happy! Andy
might have choosen to stop the development of this beautiful
development environment and went to another direction (much more
profitable for him) which would be a bad thing, directly or
indirectly, for everyone around here.

Regards,

Canol

Hey Guido:

If you have some time to spend try
http://www.codejock.com/products/ski.../?platform=com

I have no success skinning the Dolphin's windows and I only can apply
the skin to the window frame.
I currently don't need this stuff, my tests were just for fun.

Cheers
Sebastian Calvo

On 26 nov, 05:19, Guido Stepken <gstep...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi Andy!
>
> http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/CustomFrames.aspx
>
> Is that supported in Dolphin? Fresh look and feel :-)
>
> Have fun, Guido Stepken

Andy Bower schrieb:
> Guido,
>
>> Hmmm. Q: Is Dolphin IDE itself written in Dolphin Smalltalk?
>
> Yes, of course. I thought you said you had a copy of the free version?
> Surely you can see this?

Yes, of course. I know how to analyse "binaries" ... I asked for a
different reason. If s.b. develops with Dolphin - is it possible to
create applications, that don't look 'old fashioned', like Dolphin IDE?
- No! Dolphin is very close bound to that old Microsoft look and feel!

Did you notice that sudden revolution, that was initialized by iPhone
new look and feel? 2 years later, today - Symbian is dead, Windows CE is
dead, Windows Mobile is dead, QT/mobile dead ... Why? Apple simply
invented a new concept - touch, just 1 button left. That revolution now
happens to desktop computers! I have tested several new touch concepts
.... they need different 'mental models' behind GUI. I am involved in
such a development in software for hospitals, medicines. Means - 30%
less 'paper work' for medicins, access to all informations everywhere in
the world. And - easy to use. Intuitive! That's the real innovation behind!

>> Another Q:
>>
>> Do you really think, that a community will support and "go forward"
>> successfully without full sources of dolphin itself including the
>> right , freely to modify, whatever is needed to be modified?
>
> Well, yes of course, otherwise I wouldn't be trying. 98% of Dolphin's
> code is open source (i.e. freely visible and modifiable). Only the VM,
> which is written in C++ and assembler is closed.
>
> If you are implying that the only way to take Dolphin forward is to Open
> Source it then we may as well stop this conversation now.

> There are a number of Open Source Smalltalks out there already; at least
> 4 (e.g. Squeak, Pharo, FScript, GNU). I wonder if *any* of the
> developers of these are able to make a living from it?

Many of them even have become millionaires Including Linus, Richard,
MySQL/PHP people, e.t.c.! Strange, isn't it?

It is simply a question of "business strategy", not efforts or "quality
of software" (if it was like this, Microsoft wouldn't have survived,
OS/2 would be mainstream OS! ;-)

> Frankly, I don't really want to get into a big debate on Open Source
> again because the last time I mentioned it I received a ton of hate mail
> and various unpleasant comments on the web about my position on it.

Well, Andy, what happens, if your new (=old) "business concept" doesn't
work? Objects Arts perhaps goes bankrupt, sources of Dolphin burried
somewhere in your archives. Simply history. Some companies/customers
upset, but who cares? You? No! But hopefully you will get an entry in
Wikipedia under "Former Smalltalk IDE's"

Did you follow, what happened to GFA - Basic, even Borland (Delphi,
Kylix)any why? Borland once even was a market leader! Gone!

Have you seen, how big e.g. the Pharo developer group has become? - A
free Smtalltalk - a big competitor, which runs on all platforms!!
Big companies are investing - millions of bucks, e.g. SAP (HPI). Have
you understood, why they do this?

Perhaps - in a year from now on - you, Frank, Ale, ... should have a
meeting ...

Have fun till then - i wish you all the best ... i stay tuned :-)

Guido Stepken

Guido,

> Yes, of course. I know how to analyse "binaries" ...

What are you talking about?

> I asked for a
> different reason. If s.b. develops with Dolphin - is it possible to
> create applications, that don't look 'old fashioned', like Dolphin IDE?
> - No! Dolphin is very close bound to that old Microsoft look and feel!

Bollocks. I have already shown you that it is possible to develop
new-style nonstandard UIs in Dolphin. Twice. This morning I showed you
how to create non-rectangular windows in 4 lines of Smalltalk.
Yesterday, I showed you a screendump of a 3D application built in
Dolphin with non-standard animated toolbars placed over a 3D surface. I
show you all these things and yet you make no comment and just move onto
yet another question.

IMHO you are a timewaster (I don't say troll at this stage because
perhaps you don't even know you are doing it).

> Did you notice that sudden revolution, that was initialized by iPhone
> new look and feel? 2 years later, today - Symbian is dead, Windows CE is
> dead, Windows Mobile is dead, QT/mobile dead ... Why? Apple simply
> invented a new concept - touch, just 1 button left. That revolution now
> happens to desktop computers! I have tested several new touch concepts
> ... they need different 'mental models' behind GUI. I am involved in
> such a development in software for hospitals, medicines. Means - 30%
> less 'paper work' for medicins, access to all informations everywhere in
> the world. And - easy to use. Intuitive! That's the real innovation behind!

See above.

>> There are a number of Open Source Smalltalks out there already; at
>> least 4 (e.g. Squeak, Pharo, FScript, GNU). I wonder if *any* of the
>> developers of these are able to make a living from it?
>
> Many of them even have become millionaires Including Linus, Richard,
> MySQL/PHP people, e.t.c.! Strange, isn't it?

Well for a start I asked whether any OS *Smalltalk* creators had made a
living out of it. Why did you choose not to answer? I guess they would
need to answer it for themselves. It's no surprise to me that a few
people can become millionaires - but it's not the majority - or even
that common.

> Have you seen, how big e.g. the Pharo developer group has become? - A
> free Smtalltalk - a big competitor, which runs on all platforms!!

Yes, and Pharo is great. However, it is slower than Dolphin, arguably
less easy to use and doesn't support native widgets on any platform.
Maybe it will address these issues but there has been an ongoing effort
to produce a faster VM for Squeak for 10 years now and still no
noticeable progress. Why hasn't the Linus Law worked there? OS is not
necessarily a panacea for success!

Right now there are reasons why Dolphin is a better choice than Pharo
and vice versa. If it was an easy decision then all the Dolphin users
would be off using Pharo right now. Indeed some are, but others find
value in what Dolphin continues to have.

> Have fun till then - i wish you all the best ... i stay tuned :-)

Hmmm....

Andy Bower

Andy Bower schrieb:
> Guido,
>
>> Yes, of course. I know how to analyse "binaries" ...
>
> What are you talking about?
>
>> I asked for a different reason. If s.b. develops with Dolphin - is it
>> possible to create applications, that don't look 'old fashioned', like
>> Dolphin IDE? - No! Dolphin is very close bound to that old Microsoft
>> look and feel!
>
> Bollocks. I have already shown you that it is possible to develop
> new-style nonstandard UIs in Dolphin. Twice. This morning I showed you
> how to create non-rectangular windows in 4 lines of Smalltalk.

No. Just some code fragments, where the word "ellipse" was in the comments:

"We'll use the Hello World demo because it contains a nice ellipse"

And you have shown, that escaping that typical look and feel costs you
to loose frame controls:

"The frame controls have gone so you have to explicitly destroy the window"

Well, i also can open a framebuffer (see e.g. DirectShow) and paint
funny things into it. OpenGL send directly to graphic card.

> Yesterday, I showed you a screendump of a 3D application built in
> Dolphin with non-standard animated toolbars placed over a 3D surface. I
> show you all these things and yet you make no comment and just move onto
> yet another question.

Yes, seen. Some 3d avatars. Nothing special. The point is - there is a
3d framework concept missing, that will replace that old - fashioned
win32 stuff AND has new mental models there behind, which make a GUI
touchable and furthermore "INTUITIVE".

That standard is missing in the smalltalk community.

> IMHO you are a timewaster (I don't say troll at this stage because
> perhaps you don't even know you are doing it).

The real timewaster (maybe) is you, because its really difficult to make
you think, to see new chances in your life. One chance you have already
thrown away, when you have announced to discontinue Dolphin. So - learn!

>> Did you notice that sudden revolution, that was initialized by iPhone
>> new look and feel? 2 years later, today - Symbian is dead, Windows CE
>> is dead, Windows Mobile is dead, QT/mobile dead ... Why? Apple simply
>> invented a new concept - touch, just 1 button left. That revolution
>> now happens to desktop computers! I have tested several new touch
>> concepts ... they need different 'mental models' behind GUI. I am
>> involved in such a development in software for hospitals, medicines.
>> Means - 30% less 'paper work' for medicins, access to all informations
>> everywhere in the world. And - easy to use. Intuitive! That's the real
>> innovation behind!

Don't you see, that - assumed OpenSouce Development - a new OpenGL
STANDARD SMALLTALK-2010 GUI could emerge as public development effort
among Smalltalkers.

Don't you see, that this chance has come now?

That's by far more important, that investing into a jitter.

Because if that is not going to happen very soon, Smalltalk and all
smalltalk companies will disappear (if they haven't already). Even the
market leaders.
....
>> Have you seen, how big e.g. the Pharo developer group has become? - A
>> free Smtalltalk - a big competitor, which runs on all platforms!!
>
> Yes, and Pharo is great. However, it is slower than Dolphin, arguably
> less easy to use and doesn't support native widgets on any platform.

At that time, when users and developers want or need new fresh usability
concepts (the time has come now!) and new mental models (touch, 3d ...)
there behind, microsoft win32 framework will be dead within a couple of
month, replaced by NONNATIVE STANDARD OPENGL 2.0 (ES) WIDGETS ON ANY
PLATFORM.

And - The power of innovation now comes from iPhone and Android. In
former times they tried to adapt fat client technoloy to pocket pc's,
now it's the other way round!

You understand, what i want to say?

> Maybe it will address these issues but there has been an ongoing effort
> to produce a faster VM for Squeak for 10 years now and still no
> noticeable progress.

You didn't notice. The world is passing by and you sit there hacking
around, improving old stuff.

> Why hasn't the Linus Law worked there?

Works fine. Huge community is watching. Hey, where do you live? On Mars?

> OS is not necessarily a panacea for success!
>
> Right now there are reasons why Dolphin is a better choice than Pharo
> and vice versa. If it was an easy decision then all the Dolphin users
> would be off using Pharo right now.

This will happen very soon, i fear.

regards, Guido Stepken

Hi Guido,

I disagree with your claims.
I am not in the office & read news irregular therefor my late answer.

Dolphin has an excellent Development GUI & a clean patternized framework.
It is the best of all Smalltalk frameworks that I have seen.
This is also why I proposed to Andy to use our VM for the next generation
Dolphin.
Dolphin's VM is very well written & also the feature richest of all VM's
commercially available.

Please dont compare commercial Sts with free Sts. They are different & I
will not explain what need to be done to improve OS SW.
Sq or Ph may have a large community but what counts for me is first my
customer.

I have no advantage if a large community uses my technology & ideas &
incorporate my technology in OS Sts.
Also the Dolphin customers have no advantage if we am not sucesssful with
getting my customers applications running on DNG.
We need to be
(1) technical successful
(2) financial successful

with DNG
than we can think how to get more customers

If step 1,2 is successful then next steps can be taken.

yes it would be nice to have DNG 32/64 on X86 & ARM, and also for Linux. I
dont care much what other Sts have or claim to have.
most of free St work is prototypic & CANNOT be used in production - result
of free is minor quality.

It would not help me if our VM is OS - & it would not help our customer nor
the community.

What is commercial needed is a maintained VM & framework which is guaranted
to be adopted to the changing SW world.
And the SW world is not changing by having a lot of short live crap OS ware.
If people like to do business in OS world they can do- but not I.
We see today a strong Win7 market - its success based in Win32/Win64
transitioning to Win64 - that's why there was a big interest to have
Dolphins VM
ported to Win64. I do not want to argue about necessity of 64 Bit - my only
argument is integration of Dolphin into Win64

But I like to develop DNG with a small number of experts & customers first.
We will not accept any vendor or tech lock-in into DNG - but we define a
clean interface to other runtimes ( e.g .NET & Java )
We will not accept technology flow of our work into the OS Sts
But technology is luckily exposed by the core technology - the Dolphin & the
DNG VM

DNG round 0 & Dolphin 7 have both a sophisticated VM & are based on the D6
St frameworks which is based on the WinX API.

iPhone or G1 is a totally different market. It would be nice to have Dolphin
or DNG apps running here - but our customers needs are not this devices.
This can change and than we can react with technical clean & robust
solutions.

So what will be in a year ? We will have a robust DNG & hopefully D7. We
will have a number of industry apps running on DNG.
And on the OS Sts - maybe some other forks achieving better modularization &
better GUI - Are full blockclosures already supported ?

It is nice that we have OS Smalltalks but they are commercially irrelevant.

Take the comparison with car technology - a VW Polo & a Daimler can be used
to
drive from A to B. But I prefer to use a Daimler & I need to deliver
excellent work for my customer to be able to buy the next Daimler & this I
do since I was 22 years old. If I would stick to the OS world I would
probably move from A to B soon or later in a huge Daimler car called "bus".

Frank
P.S back to VM development - tomorrow is an important next internal DNG
release date & I need to test ...

> Have you seen, how big e.g. the Pharo developer group has become? - A
> free Smtalltalk - a big competitor, which runs on all platforms!!

As a visionary and smart person, you might be in a good position to
offer this type of product yourself. A free bleeding edge product to
which the throngs will flock to and make you millions of dollars (or
whatever currency you prefer). Just a thought. People don't even have
to use the product, as long as it's free. Just think "me".

If you decide to go in this direction please keep us informed. I, for
one, will stay tuned in, I would love to download it and maybe even use
it. In fact, I'll go one step further: provide custom skins for it,
e.g., a pink purse - for those extras, I might pay 5 bucks.

> Big companies are investing - millions of bucks, e.g. SAP (HPI).

The last time I saw SAP it had the most primitive interface I've ever
seen for a major commercial software product. I would hope that they
have improved it since then, but my pointer to it still stands. It is
an examplar of why content succeeds _despite_ the UI in a corporate
environment. It is not a free product by any means, especially if you
count in the extensive consulting required to install it and run it.

Best regards and keep on choogling,

-- Louis