Re: GNUstep theming (was Re: Objective-C 2.0 and other new features in Leopard)

[Dr Tomaž Slivnik]

On 28 Nov 2007, at 09:32, Markus Hitter wrote:

> > 10.5.1 (Intel)
>
> This is a brand new OS with a lot of design decisions not seen  
> before, so some failures aren't _that_ surprising. As Apple prefers  
> to collect 300 new features before offering them to non-paying  
> developers, switching to a community driven OS would likely avoid  
> such disasters.

I am very seriously considering switching to a Unix variant + GnuStep  
(be it Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. - I do not know). The Unix layer  
of Apple is definitively unsatisfactory. As is their approach to  
releasing software - release lots of flashy gummy but pay no  
attention to whether staple features actually work.

But I believe that most likely switchers / potential valuable  
developer contributors to GnuStep are now on Mac OS X. You have to  
make it easy for such people to install GnuStep on their machines.

In my case, and I suspect in case of others, it's not going to be an  
overnight switch - we work in a production environment after all. We  
have to evaluate the viability, stability etc. of the new platform,  
and data conversion/migration in case of applications which do not  
have a direct equivalent is an issue. The devil you know always has  
the advantage that at least it sort of works even if it doesn't work  
very well.

How viable would it be to write a compatibility layer for OpenStep  
4.2 Intel architecture apps to run on Darwin Intel + GnuStep  
(possibly after being patched a little by an automatic patcher  
program)? I'm assuming Mach-O format is the same, and Darwin has most  
of the system calls of NeXT's BSD/Mach even if they are slightly re- 
arranged, so it sounds like in principle it might be possible to  
write appropriate compatibility .dylibs if a compatibility Display  
Postscript was feasible.

Has TexShop or NeXTTeX been ported to Gnustep? What about OmniGroup,  
could they be persuaded to port?

Tomaž