Re: What would be the most complete GNUStep system?

[Gregory Casamento]

James,

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:12 AM, James Carthew <jcarthew@gmail.com> wrote:
> Realistically GNUStep is not ready to replace OSX by a long way. I was
> experimenting with doing so for a long time, but there hasn't been enough
> changes to the core components of the system yet, a lot more focus is on API
> features than application features. (System Preferences exists but lacks
> everything useful: Screen Resolution
> Changing/multimonitor/Wireless/Networking(Network manager or equivalent,
> wrapped)/Sound(Pulseaudio Wrapper)).

Currently SystemPreferences focuses on GNUstep specific things.  It
would be, however, pretty cool to have some pref panel plugins for the
things you mention.

> The GWorkspace application is quite good, but could be tweaked to be more
> like the Mac Finder. It already has everything you really need.

Thanks, I'm sure Enrico and Riccardo (former and current maintainer of
GWorkspace) appreciate those comments.

> The big dealbreaker for me is Vespucci.app, realistically a web browser is
> critical to using gnustep on a daily basis, and right now it just doesn't
> have one. There used to be Mantella under Etoile which wrapped Firefox into
> a gnustep window which was pretty decent. But the subsystem of firefox it
> used has been deprecated so the code no longer works.

The solution here is simple.  I've been thinking of creating a WebView
based on CEF3 which should be sufficient for creating a GNUstep based
browser.   Basically it would just be CEF3 rendering to a view in a
GNUstep window.  This would solve a lot of issues.

> A multi-tabbed terminal.app would also fix a lot of the frustration in using
> GNUStep as a standalone desktop system.

Honestly, I don't even use the tab features as much on OS X as one
might think so I don't miss them too terribly in Terminal.app.

> I think GNUStep is going to remain a useful tool for porting Mac apps to
> Linux/other platforms, but outside of that, is going to remain very niche as
> a desktop system because it hasn't got the desktop system in place yet.

The GNUstep Project itself doesn't aim to be a desktop project.   GAP,
Etoile and others are focused on making the desktop for GNUstep.
(Kind of like the relationship between GTK and GNOME)

> Also, I know that my above post looks like I favor Linux as the underlying
> system giving examples such as PulseAudio/Network Manager, but I would
> actually prefer if the System Preferences area was able to wrap Windows/Mac
> and Linux systems equally.

Not terribly difficult to accomplish.

> On 29 October 2014 09:56, Matt Rice <ratmice@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 2:39 PM, David Chisnall <theraven@sucs.org> wrote:
>> > On 27 Oct 2014, at 21:04, Asiga Nael <asiganael@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> Regarding app bundles, that's a desktop thing, not an OS thing, so that
>> >> can be done from GNUstep.
>> >
>> > Well, kind of.  To really do it properly, you also want framework
>> > bundles, and that requires some rtld patching to allow looking for 
>> > libraries
>> > in the correct place (not just lib/*.so, but following the symlinks inside
>> > the framework bundles).  GNUstep implements framework bundles in a fairly
>> > hacky way.
>>
>> In theory its possible to do without changing some rtld implementations
>> (glibc almost, and solaris definitely) by using an rtld-audit library,
>> glibc's rtld needs to be extended to support DT_DEPAUDIT I have a
>> patch somewhere for this if someone really wants to take a go at it...
>>
>> then you can throw the framework support inside a dynamically loaded
>> shared lib...
>>
>> there is this here i threw together a number of years ago, not sure if
>> it all still compiles
>>
>> https://gitorious.org/framework-plugin-4gcc
>>
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>
>
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Greg

-- 
Gregory Casamento
Open Logic Corporation, Principal Consultant
(240)274-9630 (Cell)
http://www.gnustep.org
http://heronsperch.blogspot.com