Re: Plans for ahead

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Liam,


Liam Proven wrote:
> If we can get more exposure for GNUstep, get it in front of more
> people, get it better known, then it will get more interest, more code
> contributions, more development.
>
> I don't want to change it. Improve it, yes. Change it, no.

Improvement is a Change, change is not always improvement! Becoming more 
flexible about the appearance, while improving even the default one is 
not an impossible goal.

> I'm in part interested in it because it looks like NeXTstep, and I
> think NeXTstep is the best-looking desktop there has ever been. So I
> am strongly opposed to those who want new themes: I think it already
> is nearly perfect and all the alternative themes are less attractive,
> to me.

Thanks for these words. Sometimes I feel the only one that likes the 
NeXT paradigm.
I am into GNUstep also because of the way it feels, not just because of 
the APIs!
I don't like these themes as Rik's that are just a Mac mock.

However, calling what we have "nearly perfect" is a true overstatement. 
Not only the default theme has glitches in the look, but it is also 
difficult to adapt things to other themes.

Working lately on alterantive themes (I hope to showcase stuff before 
Christmas!) I notice how certain details in the default one are ugly.

For one or the other reason we need to adopt themes. Some people like to 
change the appearance of something for the sake of it.

These weeks I am hacking full speed into getting stuff looking better 
and delving into the code of GWorkspace, rest assure, it is not "nearly 
perfect". It just happens to look decent, but it is fragile I'm 
improving it.

The past weeks have been very active in this regard! Stay tuned.

In my eyes, the biggest hurdle to a usable environment are apps: either 
plain buggy or with imperfect user interfaces. The style of icons or 
menus fades in the backgroun with this problem.


> What I suggest is just getting it running well on Ubuntu. I'm not
> really interested in Debian or any other distros, and less interested
> in other OSes. Not that I do not want it to work on them -- I very
> much do -- but I like and favour Ubuntu.

That's a personal choice of yours. In the past, Debian packages always 
worked with Ubuntu though and I suppose it still is so.
My personal preference as developer is to support thelargest number of 
systems out of the box, packaging is then up to others, which should 
then have the least effort.

> I do have a Raspberry Pi; I run RISC OS on it. I am not remotely
> interested in PiStep, or NeXT-shaped Pi cases. Frankly they sound
> silly to me. As a GNU project, a kickstarter seems strange and
> irrelevant to me, but hey, people need paying for their efforts. I am
> not interested in running GNUstep on $DISTRO on Raspberry Pi, because
> my Pi is the least powerful, least capable modern computer I own;
> everything else is faster, has more storage, is more expandable, etc.
My personal goal is to have GNUstep on my ThinkPad: it would be an 
alternative to a Mac. Hardware+Software. With an interface acutally 
closer to what I like! I am dreaming this since the past 12 years, the 
latest Thinkpads aren't that nice anymore, some years ago to me they 
were really what a NeXT laptop would have been.

> But Debian/Ubuntu packages -- better still, upstream inclusion --
> would help everyone, whether they want "modern" themes or better dev
> tools or desktops for tiny cheap computers. Even if you don't use
> Debian/Ubuntu or even Linux at all, more users and more developers
> would be good for the project.

Exactly. More themes give the choice to everybody, but shouldn't hurt 
you who want the original theme.

Riccardo