Re: NeXT GNU Homage Project Work

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

whishlists are nice, but only work creates apps and patches makes them run.

Let me comment though, since some stuff we do have, it just needs some 
polish.


Paul Ward wrote:
> Applications provided by OPENSTEP 4.2 User:
>   o Edit.app - we have this.
>   o FaxReader.app - I don't think we'd need this.
>   o Grab.app - I've seen some code (I can't remember whose) that could 
> be used for this.

I suppose we can write something "X11" specific, by using code from e.g. 
scrot, or even by just dumping scrot to /tmp and reading it back. 
Feasible. I doubt we can do make it generic, so that it works e.g.on 
Windows (or Wayland or...) becase we don'town the server like OpenStep 
or Mac do.

>   o Librarian.app - complex.
>   o Mail.app - we have this.

-> but needs polish to save it from bitrot and crashes! Hard work 
needed. Ongoing

>   o Preferences.app - I have a fuzzy memory of an OSX-like preferences 
> app for GNUstep at some point.

-> Backbone has a very "openstep" like preferences app, while GNUstep 
users has SystemPreferences which follows the Mac API more.
Some basic modules need completion/fixing though (e.g. timezone) others 
are already usable (e.g. Themes or GS preferences)
>   o Preview.app - I think we have something similar.
>   o PrintManager.app - I'm not sure if we have anything similar to this.
>   o Terminal.app - we have this.
>
> Developer applications:
>   o FileMerge.app - I'm not sure if we have anything similar.

-> we have EasyDiff

>   o HeaderViewer.app - I don't think we have anything similar.
>   o IconBuilder.app - We probably don't have anything similar.

-> Not really, but now we have Piko Pixel to edit basic TIFF icons and 
works quite nice!

>   o InterfaceBuilder.app - Gorm.
>   o MallocDebug.app - Definitely doesn't exist for GNUstep.
>   o ProjectBuilder.app - ProjectCenter.
>   o Yap.app - We have the source code for this anyhow.
>
> Admin applications:
>   o BuildDisk.app
>   o Configure.app - not really needed, as it's a driver configuration 
> tool
>   o HostManager.app
>   o Installer.app

-> the GAP rpoject would like to provide this too, there is a stub for 
it by Greg many years old. However, if you use GNUstep e.g. on Ubuntu, 
you just want to use Ubuntu packages. An installer application is more 
useful in a "GNUstep OS" where GS Apps are managed by itself.
There are many issues here, like providing different architectures, 
configuring things on the fly, providing some sort of dependencies and 
uninstall, which were not really addressed on OS.

>   o NetInfoManager.app
>   o NetInstallHelper.app
>   o NFSManager.app

-> There is a stub in GAP that could be completed

>   o SimpleNetworkStarter.app
>   o UserManager.app
>
> Other handy demo apps:
>   o OpenSesame - think sudo and/or policykit.
>   o BackSpace - I believe InnerSpace is the GNUstep flavour of this?

-> Gregory will tell you that this is the most important application ever!

> Librarian is probably something that would be hard to create as of 
> right now, as we'd want IndexingKit. Perhaps someone knows if Don 
> Yacktman is still around, last I heard MiscKit had IndexingKit.

try to ping him :)

> The admin apps are also something better off written from scratch.  
> NeXT platforms utilise NetInfo for configuration management, rather 
> than files under /etc/.  Although Apple released NetInfo as open 
> source, I'm not convinced it will be something we'd want to bother 
> with -- given the many hoops I have to jump through to get my Ubuntu 
> 15.04 system to mount my OPENSTEP 4.2 NFS shares, I probably wouldn't 
> be eager to join a GNU/Linux + GNUstep box to my NetInfo domain.

Exactly. Many differences below. Also, most of these sytem apps are very 
system dependent (and architecture depedent), not only between BSD and 
Linux, but also between flavours. This is why for now, I focus on more 
portable user applications, where we have enough to do for the next 
years anyway :(

Riccardo