What is Tweak?

The following announcement was posted by Andreas Raab on the Tweak mailing list:

Dear Friends and Collegues,

You have been invited to a sneak peek preview of what we think is going to

be the "next generation" authoring system in Squeak. Dubbed Tweak, it is

combining the strengths of Squeak, being a cross-platform, highly efficient

media engine, the strengths of Morphic, being a construction kit for

interactively building graphical objects, and combine it with the "best of

eToys" brought to the system level.

The new scripting architecture employed in Tweak essentially makes use of a

pure prototyping approach (therefore enabling you to write scripts for

individual objects) combined with a highly efficient implementation of

fundamental eToy semantics (method triggers, ticking scripts etc). If you

ever wanted things to be "as easy as in eToys and as efficient as in

Squeak", then Tweak is for you.

This release is a true alpha release as it contains many bugs and

unimplemented features. It is mainly intended to give you an idea about the

"feel" of it, and to try out a few things on your own if you wish to. I need

to point out that much of the work is still aimed towards making it easier

to build "alternate user interfaces" for scripting media environments. As

such, the use of Smalltalk syntax (with two minor extensions) has to be seen

as a stand-in. We are working on providing alternate "syntax styles",

including Python, Java Script and others.

Similarly, the tools are neither finished nor complete. However, this is the

first version in which the entire user interface has been bootstrapped -

meaning that every last element you will find in it, is a scripted object

(including viewers, menus, halos etc).

The Tweak scripting architecture will also be the foundation of Croquet

scripting. At this time, all of the basics of the architecture are present -

Tweak can be installed into an updated Croquet version and while most of the

tools for 3D scripting are still missing, much of it will evolve rapidly

over the next months as the strengths of the system in terms of defining

user interfaces will pay off.

As with all alpha versions, documentation is sparse. I have put up a brief

intro with the download which you may use to get a feel about the system -

but nothing can really replace playing with it on your own.

For additional information, check out the Tweak web site and the archives of the Tweak mailing list.

Also read an interview with Andreas Raab.

http://impara.de/project_tweak.htm

More Tweak info