Re: Thoughts triggered by these NeXTbuntu guys

[Adrian Robert]

On Aug 30, 2006, at 12:12 AM, Tima Vaisburd wrote:
> Since I'm writing some image editor I happen to know that writing of
> images in any  format other than tiff is not implemented (and most 
> people
> need jpegs or pngs instead). We do not have a single backend that works
> perfectly. The arts backend is prohibitely slow on remote connection.
> Xlib does not support rotation and poorly supports transparency. There 
> are
> cairo backend in development, but it's not released yet.

This is exactly the sort of situation offering the most hope for 
GNUstep!  It's complete enough to where one will write an application, 
or attempt a port, but the gaps are still there.  *Nothing shows these 
gaps better or more usefully than application programming.*  The best 
possible thing is to capitalize on this discovery and *work on* the 
GNUstep features in question.  Sure, it takes a little time away from 
your own project, but it will end up making it run better, so there's a 
direct benefit, and it will help other GNUstep users.

The next best possible thing is to write a good bug report and put it 
into Savannah.

However, this is far less effective than the first alternative, because 
there really aren't that many people around willing to work on the 
libraries for their own sake.  It's just not as interesting as working 
on apps.  That's why simply waiting for the GNUstep libraries to be 
"finished", up to some abstract standard or according to some list of 
bugs, is not going to get us that last mile that we need.

I heartily urge all GNUstep app developers and porters running into 
roadblocks to follow the example of others on this list who have backed 
up their complaints and questions with code.