Re: GUI without X11 / Artist Help

[Gregory John Casamento]

Jesse,

--- Jesse Ross <jesse@jesseross.com> wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> I am an artist and graphic designer who recently discovered the GNUstep 
> project. I first tried out the LiveCD, which worked well, then decided 
> to install to hard disk. I started with a fresh, minimal Debian Sarge 
> netinstall, then went through the Build notes and installed all the 
> dependencies.
>
> My question is this... how do I start a GUI session without using X11? 
> I installed both the xlib and art backends, and was able to use startx 
> to get the xlib environment running, but is there an alternative way to 
> get a GUI without using startx? Isn't using startx relying on X, and 
> not solely on libart?

Currently the only backends are art, xlib, cairo and win32.   There was an
attempt by someone to create a framebuffer based backend, but it was never
completed, although it is certainly possible to create a backend like this.
 
> Maybe I'm just confused, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me.

libart is just a drawing library.  GNUstep still needs a way to create windows,
which is why X is used.   GNUstep's gui is not dependent on X as there is no X
specific code in the gui library.  All of the code for talking to any specific
windowing system is isolated in the backend.

> If anyone can comprehend this message and give me some hints or 
> suggestions, that would be awesome.
> 
> Also, I'd be interested in helping the project out graphically -- I 
> know that Jasper is already working on the icons, but I did a few comps 
> of the required icons to show you the quality and style of my work 
> (Keep in mind, these were done over two days, so the smaller icons 
> aren't fully cleaned up yet).
> http://www.jesseross.com/clients/icons/

These look extremely good, in my opinion.

> Thanks for your help -- please let me know if there is anything I can 
> do to help out in return.

Thanks.

> Jesse Ross

Later, GJC

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