Re: new user of gnustep on ubuntu question about basic usage

[Zhang Weiwu]

On 2007-06-25 22:48:17 +0800 Zhang Weiwu <zhangweiwu@realss.com> wrote:

> 6. Is there a good way to run a gecko browser in GNUStep way? I mean, 
> firefox 
> doesn't look like a GNUStep application when I run it in GNUStep.

I have read on the web that work is in progress to build a framwork 
for web rendering for whole GNUStep including building a browser 
(vespucci). I am glad GNUStep developers are working on a GNUStep 
browser. But as a novice user I have a question: as described on the 
webpage, "Apple has not released it's WebKit under open source so 
GNUstep WebKit provides a WebKit implementation from scratch." 
Everytime when I see message like "start from scratch" in an 
opensource project I worry about it, usually it means it will be long 
long time before I can use it, I heard such words from enlightenment 
E17 (and finally given up using enlightenment because they have 
nothing new and stable in recent 9 years), from Haiku as well as other 
opensource projects. I wonder (purly from a novice user's view) why 
not use gecko engin which is GPLed, widerly used (more market share 
then all webkit browsers) and probably do have API at higher level? It 
looks like gecko-based browsers are easy to build (otherwise there 
wouldn't be so many), perhaps we can have an earlier release if there 
is an gecko-based GNUStep browser?

Probably there are technical reasons behind it that I don't know of. 
e.g. gecko is not written in Objective-C. I'd be thankful if someone 
comment on this:)