Re: XML idea

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 8 Jan 2004, at 10:48, Nicola Pero wrote:

> > It would be nice if the PortabilityKit team finished some of the 
> > classes
> > that are semi-portable between GNUstep and Cocoa (such as the
> > NSDocument architecture, for example).
> > Do the PortabilityKit team plan to submit fixes for classes already in
> > GNUstep?
>
> If what they want to achieve is easy portability, it would be criminal 
> if
> they didn't finish the unfinished classes in GNUstep :-)
>
>
> > From the other side, I think GNUstep should remove
> > poorly-designed / unfinished classes (like NSToolBar and NSDrawer)
> > and let the PortabilityKit team implement them.
>
> Why don't they just finish those classes and contribute them to 
> GNUstep ?
>
> It's easy to make everyone happy with stuff like NSToolBar.  We put an
> implementation in gnustep-gui.  If you are an OpenStep purist and don't
> want to use it, you don't use it - you can ignore it.  If you are an
> Apple-compatible guy and want to use it, you use it.  I don't see why 
> we
> should remove NSToolBar from gnustep-gui.  The problem arises when 
> adding
> Apple compatibility pollutes or confuses the original OpenStep classes
> (then, we need a "superior workaround").  Adding an additional separate
> class does not.

Can I second this.
I have no problem with (actually, welcome) additions of well coded new
classes/methods which implement MacOS-X additions ... I've added
quite a few myself ... ok, maybe not so much of the 'well coded' bit :-)

However ... additional clutter can get confusing - I feel that classes 
that
are poorly designed and/or are really only there for compatibility 
reasons
should be identified in some way - perhaps the source in a subdirectory,
definitely some clear distinction in the documentation etc to show that
their use is not recommended.

For instance ... I'd be happy to have the base library support apples
scripting classes, but there are *lots* of them - so they hugely 
increase
the count of source files and header files and classes in the 
documentation,
and this makes it more cumbersome to browse these files and harder for
a beginner to learn what's important.  I don't want that.

So ... I want all the apple portability code to be part of the GNUstep
core, but I want it done in a way that keeps the clean/simple basic
design plain for beginners and for people who don't need these
classes to port MacOS-X code to GNUstep.

Putting the source code in a subdirectory, and extending the
automatically generated documentation to mark such stuff as
MacOS-X compatibility code would be quite enough to make
me very happy,