discuss-gnustep
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Cocotron


From: Gregory John Casamento
Subject: Re: Cocotron
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 06:54:23 -0800 (PST)

Fred,

No one is putting down Cocotron.   My earlier assessment wasn't meant as a 
negative, only to represent what I had found in Cocotron in comparison to 
GNUstep after a quick review.

You are right in the sense that there are things we can learn from Cocotron.   
They have done some pretty interesting things.

That being said... we are simply wondering why, when GNUstep is the most 
visible of all Cocoa clones, someone would go through so much trouble to 
duplicate our efforts.  It's a very understandable question.
 
As far as understanding how they think, Richard and I have been talking to them.

Later, GJC

--
Gregory Casamento
## GNUstep Chief Maintainer

----- Original Message ----
From: Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de>
To: Gregory John Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com>
Cc: GNUstep Discussion <discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>; Helge Hess 
<helge.hess@opengroupware.org>
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006 9:41:47 AM
Subject: Re: Cocotron

Sorry to join this discussion so late, I had other things to do the last
few days :-)

Let my state first that I don't like the way most posters on this
mailing list are addressing the subject. I do fully agree in them not
seeing the need for yet another GNUstep clone, but this is really just
our view of it. If we write about cocotron that way, we will never reach
it's programmers. What we should try to do is understand how they think
about their project themselves. See what is good about it and try to
learn from it. Only after having done that step should we go out and ask
them why they don't join GNUstep. Doing so in a long mail that lists
what we like about their project and their code, is something different
than sending out mails that list what GNUstep does a lot better.
Sure GNUstep is more complete in almost any regard, at least I hope so
having spend so much time on it :-) Still it is very impressive to see
how much the developers of cocotron have achieved in rather little time.
If I understand their comments correctly there are just two main
developers. But if they keep up the current speed they will overtake
GNUstep in a year or two.

So what do I find great in this project? Some of these points have
already been listed by others and you may have other items to add.

- Framework support for MS Windows. This is something that should go
back into the main line of the GNU binary utilities and thereby help
GNUstep as well.
- Basic CoreGraphics library. it really makes live easier for people
porting over from MacOSX.
- Cross-compilation from XCode. This is no must for GNUstep, but again
it makes live easier.
- Aiming for MacOS 10.4, where GNUstep is still lagging behind.
- Grouping class files that belong together in sub directories.
- Clean code without all the backwards compatible stuff we sometimes
need in GNUstep.
- Consistent coding style. OK, this is much easier to achieve when the
coding gets done by just two people in one year. Still, I find it makes
code so much easier to read.
- Their blog (http://www.cocotron.org/blog/) is much more fun then the
GNUstep ones :-)

I would expect that even when we all agree, to take over most of these
points from cocotron (which I don't expect based on the previous
discussion), still the cocotron people will keep up their own separate
project. Fine for me. I think the LGPL is important and copyright
assignment to the FSF is too. If somebody disagrees here, there is
nothing to be done.
What we should try to reach anyway is a mutually agreed statement about
the similarities and differences between GNUstep, cocotron, mySTEP and
libFoundation that should be placed on all different web sites. That
will make it easier for users to choose which framework they want to
build on. Of course, I hope it will be GNUstep most of the time.

Cheers,
Fred



_______________________________________________
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep







reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]