Re: GNUstep moving forward

[Gregory John Casamento]

Nicolas,

--- Nicolas Roard <address@hidden> wrote:

> On 10/22/05, Gregory John Casamento <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > GNUstep has been relatively stagnant over the last several months and it
> > has
> > become a cause for concern for me.
>
> yes, many people seems to be quite busy irl lately :-/

Yes, myself included to some degree.

> I've been doing a lot of thinking and have compiled a list of things I
> > believe
> > that GNUstep needs to address to stay on top of things. The list follows:
> >
> > 1) More apps. Many of the following points will help with this, but this
> > is
> > very important.
> > 2) Better theme support. Integration of Camaelon into the core gui library
> > if
> > possible
> 
> 
> that's possible, and I must say that's what I was supposed to do, more or
> less..
> but I was really busy these last months, so I didn't do as much work on
> camaelon
> that I wanted :-/
>
> Note that you can get the current sources from étoilé's cvs:
> http://www.etoile-project.org
> 
> it wouldn't be that much work to properly integrate camaelon in -gui, but..
> it needs to be done.
> 
> I need to encapsulate the current -gui drawing in the GSDrawFunctions class,
> and integrate camaelon's modifs to -gui so that the widgets call
> GSDrawFunctions. Then Camaelon can simply provide its own implementation of
> GSDrawFunctions, enabling a pixmap theme, or you can have "programmed"
> themes containing normal code (for the default NeXTSTEP look, or anything
> else)

I think we should start working on this ASAP.
 
> Partly I didn't do it yet because I wanted to "freeze" the GSDrawFunctions
> api before starting to do that ... but well perhaps it would have been
> better to commit whatever was ready instead of waiting (retrospectively, it
> seems as a better idea).
> 
> 3) Better win32 support. Many companies are really eager to port their
> > legacy
> > NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP or Cocoa apps to GNUstep under Windows. The prospect of
> > Linux and BSD support appeals to them as well, but not as much as Windows.
> > I currently have two companies with whom I am talking about this.
> 
> Completely agree ! A good Windows port is really important, and I'm quite
> thrilled by what happend during this last year..

Me too, things will continue to improve.

> 4) Better distro support. We really need to get GNUstep into as many
> > distributions as possile, this will ramp up exposure of GNUstep to more
> > people
> > and help us get more developers and users.
> >
> > We as a project need to be more adaptive and less resistant to change.
> > More
> > than anything right now we need to consider the audience we are playing
> > to.
> > GNUstep needs to be better able to integrate with other environments.
> >
> > Additionally, I've noticed recently a trend for certain people to
> > constantly
> > query the list asking for permission to make this or that change. It seems
> > that what we need more than anything right now is more action and less
> > talk.
> > If you are interested in doing something, please do it! :)
> 
> 
> I completely agree :-)
> 
> And I think that svn/svk could really help for that... hopefully we'll be
> able to use svn, now that RMS gave its approval...

Indeed.

> >Please think about what I've said and let me know your thoughts. I say the
> > above out of concern for the community. GNUstep is and always has been a
> > true labor of love for me. I want to see it thrive.
> 
> I think we're all here because we love the project; and we need to come up
> with a good direction..

A Road Map is what's needed.

> I think what's missing is a clearer distinction between gnustep "the
> framework" and gnustep "the rest of the frameworks, the dev apps, the user
> apps".. I think having "separate" projects (GNUstep Development Environment,
> GNUstep Desktop), even if it only amount to just changes on the website,
> would be helpful.

I believe that one thing that GNUstep needs to focus on is a Desktop
environment.   We need to be both an API *AND* a Desktop environment.

> Also, GNUstep could be slightly modular (say, use -foundation but not DO..);
> and probably the "important" thing for the user would be a better
> separation/modularization of the desktop parts, eg, like Alex Malmberg once
> proposed with Desktop Bundles, where the desktop functionalities could be
> implemented/extended by desktop bundles (you'd want a "GNUstep" bundle to
> have the current behavior, but a "KDE" or "GNOME" bundle to have proper
> integration, etc.)

I agree with this.  It might be a good thing to have themes which imitate other
environments so that GNUstep can more easily integrate with them.
 
> Anyway, as always, talk is cheap, but I think thoses are the directions that
> would be helpful.. To summarize, cleaner separations and modularization...
> but anyway, what will happen only depends on who will do the job -- so if
> you're interested by working on that, do it :-)

We need more people involved in this than just one.   I'm trying to motivate
the community to take some action as a whole on these things.

Later, GJC

Gregory John Casamento 
-- CEO/President Open Logic Corp. (A MD Corp.)
## Maintainer of Gorm (IB Equiv.) for GNUstep.