Re: ANNOUNCE: GNUstep Renaissance is out!

[Helge Hess]

Nicola Pero wrote:
> > > There's a lot more difference between .gorm and .gsmarkup (as I imagine
> > > it) than an "output format". "Borrowing" code is a good idea, but I
> > > think trying to squeeze both models into one app would cause nothing but
> > > problems.
> >
> > From looking at gsmarkup, it seems as though most of the same concepIB is 
> > pretty much like Eclipse, only less complex ;-) - a framework for managing 
> > objects.
ts apply.
...
> If all it was about was just a new XML .nib format, it would have been a
> pretty useless project, and I would not have started it in the first
> place.
...

I think I should shortly explain what I mean if I talk about IB/nib 
integration ;-)

I completly agree with Nicola that the concepts of a traditional .nib 
file and of R. are very different and that IB's default editing tools 
are not setup to support things like layout containers.
But that IMHO doesn't imply that the two cannot be used together (in a 
useful way) ! Autolayouted interfaces (IMHO) usually look good in 95% of 
the cases, but for the remaining 5% IB is an very good tool for 
construction of fixed UIs. Eg a carefully designed InfoPanel like:
  http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/software/MulleStringReplacer/
probably won't gain anything from R..

IB as an application (I'm not talking about the .nib) provides a very 
good framework for R. UI construction given that it's extremly 
extensible. We can easily add inspectors for the layout of the R. 
components and we can reuse IB connector mechanisms for associations.
I imagine something like a root .nib which defines menu and the root 
container and embedded R. components for the rest of the UI.

So, IMHO it doesn't make sense to join the two file formats ".nib" and 
".gsxml?", but IB/Gorm as an application framework should be able to 
handle both environments given it's PnP architecture.

But we'll see ;-) Need to compile R. first ...

Thanks Nicola for this excellent christmas present !!! :-)

Greetings
  Helge

PS: there are also existing GUI tools for autolayout based interfaces, 
like XULmaker or Glade. Could be useful too ...