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Omniuser
Last updated at 6:42 am UTC on 16 December 2021
The idea of Alan Kay explained below (2001) has never been implemented/published.
An "Omniuser" interface is for everybody.



A few simple steps which do not require much programming experience (though not what Alan Kay intended):

"Simple scripts"
(e.g. block as the target).
Do simple scripts in a Workspace and use ListChooser to get input parameters, e.g.
 ListChooser chooseItemFrom: #(red green blue yellow black white) title: 'Pick a color'
Exercise: construct a launcher window - version 3
How do I move a morph from one project to another?
SVG construction example 1

How do I create a InternalThreadNavigationMorph and a project navigation path with a script?

2001


Alan Kay wrote back in 2001...
> That just happens to be what we've been working on the last several years.
> From the beginning we envisioned three "views" of the system.
> We now call them


> The "omniuser" view is the "superhypercard view". Both the etoys view and the
> omniuser view have special attention to syntax and the amount of the
> system that is seen by the user.
> The omniuser view has taken a long time because of the amount of functionality needed
> (it runs from hypercard like things to multimedia scripting like things), and
> (more) because of the difficulty of documentation and support.

The Squeak support for building active essays is called the "omniuser interface". This interface should not require a full programming degree, but it is acceptible if it requires roughly as much time as it takes to learn written composition. Thus it should be accessible to omniusers, i.e. almost everyone.

Our plans have been to have at least three sites, one for each of the authoring environments in Squeak that we've been working on. So:

Squeakland.org is primarily for children, parents and teachers who use "etoys"
SqueakOmni.org is for "Omniuser Squeakers" – sort of from Hypercard to Lingo and beyond
Squeak.org is for "Expert Level" Squeakers – the bolts, nuts and guts of the system

The middle site and the middle authoring environment are quite a few months (?) away from birth.