Re: Cocoa/Windows parallel dvlpmt

[Florent Pillet]

On 4 févr. 04, at 15:42, Philip Mötteli wrote:

> > I'd go farther than that.
>
> Could you please repeat that and send a copy to P. C. D. Robert? I 
> can't remember all the names, that already publically said, that they 
> are interested in a Windows port of GS. But it needs to be more 
> evolved. P.C.D. Robert seems to constantly censore such statements. 
> Perhaps we have to make a mail bomb that it gets into his mail box?

There is no need for a mail bomb. Philippe may not see the point in a 
good Windows port of GNUStep, but maybe he is ignoring the large number 
of Mac OS X developers who are starving for a Cocoa equivalent on 
Windows.

Now there are a few things about GS that need to be very clear:

- NeXT having been absorbed by Apple (though some will say that it 
happened the other way round :-)), the new baseline OpenStep APIs are 
Cocoa. Any attempt to ignore this fact will lead to Cocoa developers 
turning away from GNUStep. Let me repeat that: OpenStep is history. 
Cocoa is the new specification. Hence, GS should at least provide the 
equivalence to the N-1 version of Cococa (ie currently offer the set of 
APIs that were in Jaguar would be deemed acceptable by developers).

- A Windows port would be the major selling point for most Cocoa 
developers. Especially the ones who develop Cocoa applications for a 
living. I would classify the interest in porting applications to Linux 
as marginal right now, though Linux compatibility would be a good side 
effect of people using GS to port to Windows.

- To get more developers on the project, people who know the project 
intimately need to produce some architectural documents and at least a 
pretty exhaustive document that lists what works, what doesn't, class 
by class and method by method. This is about the only efficient way 
someone (like me, for example) could dive into GS and say "ok I need to 
implement this to get my stuff to work".

- I think that the look and feel issue needn't to be overlooked. As 
Alex mentioned it, people must overcome their own personal taste and 
realize that in any given platform, the only acceptable way of 
displaying the UI is by respecting the platform look and feel.

- Finally, I think that some effort should be done towards a less 
emotional communication. I can frankly say that reading long flaming 
threads between people in the discuss-gnustep archives is something 
that makes one colder about helping the project...

Florent

--
Florent Pillet, Code Segment       florent.pillet@wanadoo.fr
Developer tools and end-user products for Palm OS & Mac OS X
ICQ: 117292463               http://perso.wanadoo.fr/fpillet