Re: gnustep compared to other toolkits

[Tyson Whitehead]

> I think you misunderstood it a bit. Of course the 'default' GNUstep UI
> should not go away !! I absolutly agree that NeXTstep UI is just great.
>
> But it would be nice to have GNUstep customizable so that it can adopt
> better if used in other environments. I would guess that a default for
> placing the menues into the window wouldn't be too difficult to
> implement, but would help making GS accessible on some WMs at all (as
> mentioned the last time I checked I couldn't use GS on Exceed at all,
> because the menues didn't work).

I think that this is a great idea.  I see nothing wrong with giving people
a choice to make the app look/feel like what they want it to look/feel
like.  NeXTstep to those who want it, and a chance to do whatever for
those who don't.  I don't see any benefit in forcing people to swallow the
NeXT look/feel if they don't want to (seeing as they most probably just
won't use GNUstep then).

It's proven in business that the way to steal market share (code share in
this case) is to give people the ability to get in easy (not a whole new
camel to swallow) and out easy (people don't switch when they are not
100% if they think that they are going to be locked in).  Microsoft Excel
didn't really take over the spreadsheet market until they made Excel both
read (this was obvious) and save (this was not obvious, but it was the
real kicker) 123 files.  In order to displace 123's market share, it was
necessary to be total interpretable with it (i.e. it would be a good thing
if GNUstep worked well with KDE and GNOME -- don't thumb them until we are
on at least equal footing).

For a better idea of the code share we need to capture with the Objective
C compiler, have a look at
"http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/redhat71-v1/redhat71sloc.html"; section 3.3.
Sadly Objective C is pretty much on the bottom.  I think getting people to
use GNUstep (even if that means they choose not to use the NeXT look/feel)
is the best thing that can be done for the project and for increasing the
use of Objective C in general (good thing :-)).

If the NeXT interface is truly the interface for champions, it will just
win out naturally in the long run once people have switched over.  I just
think it would be a really bad idea to force an interface down peoples
throats when we are still struggling to even place in the code share
race.  Let's use some M$ embrace and extended techniques to capture some
code/app share first (seems to have worked good for them *grin*)...

After all, we are running under Linux here, so a good deal of the users
are also the developers that want to see the light and start using
Objective C!

Just my thoughts on the matter,
-T

--
 Tyson Whitehead  (-twhitehe_nospam@nospam_uwo.ca -- WSC 140-)
 Computer Engineer                          Dept. of Applied Mathematics,
 Graduate Student- Applied Mathematics      University of Western Ontario,
 GnuPG Key ID# 0x8A2AB5D8                   London, Ontario, Canada