Re: Plans for ahead

[James Carthew]

I'm going to weigh in here in the UI discussions. I come from a mainly user background. A couple observations. Yes gnustep is a bit ugly, but that's not really my biggest concern. I have been trying to run GNUStep as a desktop environment mostly to replace OSX on Linux. It is not a viable replacement at this time. My reasons are this: I can only open a single terminal tab per terminal window (this is causing my screens to get cluttered even though I have huge screen real estate 2.5k/4k monitors). Lack of a web browser (if I run any third party browser my Apple style horizontal menu disappears. This is extremely annoying, Mantella will not compile with modern firefox and wrapping a browser is beyond my programming capabilities). Lack of tools to configure simple desktop settings such as xrandr, pulseaudio and network-manager (gnustep needs arandr ported to it, preferably as a SystemPreferences.app module) These are all things which destroy the user experience for me. The theme isn't that important to me, I want GNUStep because I can use it to run as Apple style, Windows style or Next style, throw an Amiga Style, and a tablet style in and you've covered all of the deskop UI styles most people want to run these days.

On 29 November 2015 at 18:10, Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:

Riccardo,

On Sun, Nov 29, 2015 at 9:16 AM, Riccardo Mottola
<riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Gregory Casamento wrote:
>>>
>>> I absolutely want "our" menus, they are distinctive and useful and if I
>>> were
>>> >to make a reference distribution, I'd want to retain that.
>>
>> They are OLD.   More important than their usefulness is what they
>> invoke and that is they make people think that we are NeXTSTEP and
>> OPENSTEP only.  Like it or not our old look is part of our problem.
>> I'm sorry you don't like this fact, but it is based on tons of first
>> hand observation over the last ten years.
>
>
> I'm sorry you mix look and with interface design. Facts and factoids.

Which are factoids?  All of the observations from people at the
events, on twitter, etc... are based on personal experience.   I hear
it every day.  Not factoids... these are widely held opinions.  I'm
sorry you don't want to believe it.

> Actually, our menus are NEW, they are newer than in-window menus and
> one-menu-bar on the top which came from Mac and Motif/OS2/Windows. They have
> close parents and predecessors (e.g. SGI menus, Amiga menus) but NeXT made
> them consistent.

They are from 1985.  Sorry, they evoke images of the past.

> The interaction with our menus makes NeXT & GNUstep distinctive and as
> trying to port applications back and forth it allows for a unique
> interaction. It allows, for example to have very smooth document based
> applications which are impossible to achieve (as still the latest office
> suite of a big software company proves) with in-window menus.
> It offers the same functionality as a top menu bar, but is more flexible and
> works well with big screens or multiple-screens. We do not need to invent
> things like "tearable menus" and even "palettes" are not strictly necessary.

Distinctive, perhaps.   Perhaps there is a way we could make them more
modern and still keep them next like.  I am not advocating getting rid
of them or going for in-window or menu-bar menus (on the top of the
screen)... what I'm suggesting is something like what was originally
proposed by Jesse a few years ago in the attached file.

> Thus, playing the same song is of no good for anybody.

I would very much like to see our interface changed to something
everyone can be in love with.   This is only good for the project.
Our out of the box experience with users SUCKS ROCKS and this is
something we need to think about.

> Riccardo

GC
--
Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
http://ind.ie/phoenix/

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