Re: [Discuss-gnustep] GNUstep should remain independent of any window manager.

[Christian Edward Gruber]

The problem here, is that a GNUstep dock implies a GNUstep workspace, which 
overlaps, functionally, with the concept of a Window Manager in X.  I think 
that in this case, it's probably unavoidable, but I think it's reasonable to 
have a "preferred" WM, simply so that good features which are not essential to 
any application functionality can be developed.  However, I think that one way 
to achieve this independence of which you speak is to look at KDE and Gnome's 
various menuing systems, and see if there isn't enough API to have a menu 
bridge, or some similar bridging, so that (as with Rhapsody, OS for NT, and OS 
for Mach in the old days) the same menu API in GNUstep can render in each 
menuing paradigm of the Window Manager (for at least those three primaries).  A 
good adapter pattern could do the trick, if KDE and Gnome expose enough 
functionality.  Alternately, it might be good to prototype it with WM, and 
propose API changes to KDE/Gnome.

regards,
christian.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Casamento" <borgheron@yahoo.com>
To: <discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2000 11:03 AM
Subject: [Discuss-gnustep] GNUstep should remain independent of any window 
manager.


> GNUstep should simply be an API, folks.   We can go ahead
> and make it into an environment, but it shouldn't be inexorably
> tied to one given window manager (namely WindowMaker).  I should
> have the *capability* to work w/ WindowMaker, but not to the
> exclusion of all else.
> 
> One of the things I am hoping will happen, eventually, is that we
> can have a "pure" GNUstep environment w/ a GNUstep based Dock.
> In this case we could either use WindowMaker is a window server,
> or we could have the apps draw thier own frames (as is done in
> OPENSTEP) and have a small window manager for X-only apps.
> 
> Tieing GNUstep to one window manager severly restricts the users
> options and will cost us users.  There are some people out there
> who think AfterStep is the greatest, and won't be willing to switch.
> 
> Later, GJC
> 
> =====
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> Gregory John Casamento           Sr. Software Engineer
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