Re: Discuss-gnustep Digest, Vol 36, Issue 37

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 26 Nov 2005, at 13:25, Michael Thaler wrote:

> On Saturday 26 November 2005 12:57, discuss-gnustep-request@gnu.org  
> wrote:
>
> > My idea of a good desktop follows along the nextstep design and thats
> > it. Did Steve Jobs intend nextstep to be a good citizen of other
> > desktops? I dont think so. I dont know about openstep but it seems
> > that its not a good citizen of other desktops too. Maybe thats why
> > next was never able to make a sustainable business on it.
>
> The problem with this is, that gnustep is not useable as a desktop  
> at all
> right now. For instance, there is no browser, so you have to use  
> Firefox or
> Konqueror or any other browser of your choice

Yep ... I use firefox within a GNUstep desktop and I find it  
annoyingly clunky/awkward in comparison with the 'native'  
applications.  Perhaps we should try getting in on firefox  
development with the aim of getting it to play nicely with GNUstep?  
Seamless integration is probably an unreasonable target, but perhaps  
we could get an option for its menu system to work like a GNUstep app?

> and gnustep apps and KDE/GNOME
> apps just don't work very well together because of issues like  
> horizontal
> menu bar vs. vertical menubar. Furthermore, under KDE gnustep is  
> basically
> not usable at all. The gnustep menu doesn't work correctly. I don't  
> know if
> this is a kwin bug or a gnustep bug.

Any KDE users want to fix this?

> And nextstep/openstep is dead for a long time. Without Steve Jobs  
> noone would
> care for nextstp/openstep at all anymore. Steve Jobs did the right  
> thing. He
> turned nextstep into something the average Joe user can and wants  
> to use.
> Steve Jobs allways managed to make things that excite people. But  
> gnustep is
> not exciting for the average Joe user. It is an excellent development
> framework based on an excellent language, but there are absolutely no
> applications which make it worth using gnustep, it looks ugly  
> compared to
> MacOSX, KDE or GNOME (this is of course personal preference but I  
> am quite
> sure if you ask 100 average computer users which look they like  
> most, gnustep
> will be the loser by a wide margin),

True if you show them it on a 14" display ... the gui was designed  
for 19" and more, and really is far and away better than any of the  
others on a 21" ... one of the reasons I want better theme support in  
the gui is so that we can have a modified look/feel that works well  
for small displays. Personally, I think the GNUstep gui is still a  
winner down to 17", but below that MacOS-X definitely seems to work  
best.

> it interoperates badly with every other
> free desktop environement (which is bad because there are essential  
> apps like
> a browser missing in gnustep) and it is hard to install.

The last I'm unsure about ... whenever I've tried to build/install  
kde or gnome it's been a hell of a mess, and I've only ever had a  
smooth time of it when depending on some distribution to have  
packaged it so I don't have to do it myself.  I strongly suspect that  
gnustep is actually comparatively easy to install.  However, we are  
coming from behind in the race ... it's not good enough to be the  
easiest to build/install if the alternatives (and everything they  
depend upon) come pre-installed as part of the distribution.

> I wish there would be someone like Steve Jobs who could make  
> gnustep more
> popular. It is such a nice framework based on a really nice  
> language. But
> without a bigger community, gnustep will never gain enough  
> momentum. And
> without some radical changes in look and feel and interoperability  
> this will
> not happen.

Since I think we have easily the best look and feel on large/modern  
displays, obviously changing the look/feel would be a BAD idea on  
those systems.  However, the rest I agree with ... we need themes for  
alternatives on smaller displays and to give us the option of fitting  
into essentially non-gnustep environments.  As a happy byproduct of  
such themability people who simply don't like the GNUstep look/feel  
would be able to adopt others irrespective of the actual merits in  
terms of usability.

It would also be nice to improve select non-gnustep applications  
(firefox my favorite) to work better in a GNustep environment.

Another thing I'd like to see is thought on how to integrate better  
into non-gnustep environments, as this seems a fairly obvious first  
stage to getting people to look at GNUstep.   For instance, app icons  
are a big advantage of GNUstep ... you can use drag and drop to put  
things  on them ... eg have the app open documents dropped on it.   
you can have the app icon display application status information  
etc.  We could have a dock application to hold app icons where the  
window manager doesn't use them, retaining the enhanced functionality  
they provide for GNUstep apps, but managing the icons so they don't  
look so out of place on a system not designed to work with them.