Re: Clash of the Titans, GNUstep alongside GNOME

[Sašo Kiselkov]

First of all, a little criticism at the beginning: you are comparing two
different things: GNUstep is a framework for developing applications, Gnome is
a desktop environment. So next time compare either Gnome to, say, the Etoile
project (www.etoile-project.org) or GNUstep to GTK 2.0.

Quoting Thom Cherryhomes <thom.cherryhomes@gmail.com>:

> I have posted a screenshot of GNUstep apps running alongside GNOME
> applications....
>
> I did this, because a picture is worth a thousand words as to the
> state of GNUstep's.... interoperability with other desktop
> environments....
>
> http://64.74.186.169/gnustep_vs_gnome.png

Nice shot ;-)

> I did this with GNUstep out of the box, no customisations, and put
> GWorkspace alongside the GNOME Nautilus file manager...why? because
> the file manager is what we use day in and day out to launch programs,
> launch documents, accomplish things...
>
> it is worth noting that YES, a colour change would go part of the way
> to avoid the clash,

GNUstep is themeable, so you can easily switch to some other more fancy theme.

> but it doesn't solve some of the more glaring
> issues... particularly
>
> (1) the BIG APPICON THAT DOESN'T FIT ANYWHERE

That's a matter of interface design. GNUstep follows the Apple/NeXT design which
is app-centric, whereas Gnome follows Microsoft design which is window-centric.
This roughly means:

- In Apple/NeXT, the app is represented by a small graphical object (the app
icon), and windows are more like scratch pads (documents) where you get your
work done. It doesn't matter to you whether an app is running or not, you just
use the documents it opens, when you're done, simply close them and not care
about the small app icon.

- In Microsoft, each single window corresponds to an instance of the app
running. Open two Notepad windows, you have two running Notepad instances.

Therefore, to get a consistent GNUstep environment, you *must* use some sort of
dock-like app. Again on the other hand: I can't stand it when some non-NeXTish
apps in my Window Maker environment simply don't show an app icon, but instead
only when I miniaturize their window. Ugh - I hate that.

> (2) the BIG vertical menu that sticks out like a sore thumb amongst
> the horizontal menu bars

Use the WildMenus bundle available from the GNUstep Applications Database
(http://www.gnustep.org/GSWeb/GSApps.woa), section Workspace & Dock to make your
menus horizontal.

However, it would be quite tough to get the main menu of an app into it's window
(to look more Windowsish), due to the differences in UI paradigms.

> (3) the fact that the widgets look much less refined and sleek than
> their gnome counterparts (before you say anything, I will make the
> point that ClearLooks is _NOW_ The default packaged look with GNOME
> 2.12.)

And the default one with Etoile is Nesedah, which is also pretty fancy, so it's
out of question for me. ;-)

> We need to look at this picture and take pause
> because it gives us what we need to do to play nicer...
>
> i do notice the XDG patch, and it seems to work pretty well, the icons
> show up in the task bar :-)
>
> Thoughts? discussions?
>
> -Thom
>

Regards
--
Saso