Re: Discuss-gnustep Digest, Vol 36, Issue 37

[Rogelio M. Serrano Jr.]

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On 2005-11-26 23:54:31 +0800 Richard Frith-Macdonald
<richard@brainstorm.co.uk> wrote:

> On 26 Nov 2005, at 13:25, Michael Thaler wrote:
> Yep ... I use firefox within a GNUstep desktop and I find it 
> annoyingly 
> clunky/awkward in comparison with the 'native'  applications. 
> Perhaps we 
> should try getting in on firefox  development with the aim of getting 
> it to 
> play nicely with GNUstep?  Seamless integration is probably an 
> unreasonable 
> target, but perhaps  we could get an option for its menu system to 
> work like 
> a GNUstep app?

Yes I agree.

> > and gnustep apps and KDE/GNOME
> > apps just don't work very well together because of issues like 
> > horizontal
> > menu bar vs. vertical menubar. Furthermore, under KDE gnustep is 
> > basically
> > not usable at all. The gnustep menu doesn't work correctly. I don't 
> > know if
> > this is a kwin bug or a gnustep bug.
>
> Any KDE users want to fix this?

yup this should befixed.


> True if you show them it on a 14" display ... the gui was designed 
> for 19" 
> and more, and really is far and away better than any of the  others 
> on a 21" 
> ... one of the reasons I want better theme support in  the gui is so 
> that we 
> can have a modified look/feel that works well  for small displays. 
> Personally, I think the GNUstep gui is still a  winner down to 17", 
> but below 
> that MacOS-X definitely seems to work  best.

Again yes i agree. I have to get a 19 inch soon.

> The last I'm unsure about ... whenever I've tried to build/install 
> kde or 
> gnome it's been a hell of a mess, and I've only ever had a  smooth 
> time of it 

Been there... done that. Im not going back to see if got better.

The installation issue is really not gnusteps fault. Somebody just
needs to engineer the installation. but hey we are not there yet.

I like the openstep idea though and i think im going to take a deep
breathe calm down and take a pause from my pursuit of a pure nextstep
clone.

If we look at a little history...

nextstep came first. then they stripped it out and it became openstep.
openstep is portable to other platforms and architectures. then came
webobjects. This makes me realize that nextstep can be made out of
openstep and the portablility of the apps can be a benefit to the
nextstep clone. wait, did this happen already?

> > I wish there would be someone like Steve Jobs who could make 
> > gnustep more
> > popular. It is such a nice framework based on a really nice 
> > language. But
> > without a bigger community, gnustep will never gain enough 
> > momentum. And
> > without some radical changes in look and feel and interoperability 
> > this 
> > will
> > not happen.
>
> Since I think we have easily the best look and feel on large/modern 
> displays, obviously changing the look/feel would be a BAD idea on 
> those 
> systems.  However, the rest I agree with ... we need themes for 
> alternatives 
> on smaller displays and to give us the option of fitting  into 
> essentially 
> non-gnustep environments.  As a happy byproduct of  such themability 
> people 
> who simply don't like the GNUstep look/feel  would be able to adopt 
> others 
> irrespective of the actual merits in  terms of usability.
>
> It would also be nice to improve select non-gnustep applications 
> (firefox my 
> favorite) to work better in a GNustep environment.

Yup. I think this is really very important. I dont care if we bend
gnome to work with gnustep or make gnome look like gnustep. whichever
is easier. we put the vertical scroll bar to the left and make the
menu vertical. I think the "gnustep community" got it all covered. I
can see theme projects, somebody is working on windows, some on a next
clone, some on webobjects. is anybody doing multiarch/cross builds?

> Another thing I'd like to see is thought on how to integrate better 
> into 
> non-gnustep environments, as this seems a fairly obvious first  stage 
> to 
> getting people to look at GNUstep.   For instance, app icons  are a 
> big 
> advantage of GNUstep ... you can use drag and drop to put  things  on 
> them 
> ... eg have the app open documents dropped on it.   you can have the 
> app icon 
> display application status information  etc.  We could have a dock 
> application to hold app icons where the  window manager doesn't use 
> them, 
> retaining the enhanced functionality  they provide for GNUstep apps, 
> but 
> managing the icons so they don't  look so out of place on a system 
> not 
> designed to work with them.

Its a political world...

Yeah we should make gnustep become a good desktop citizen.

more openstep apps the better.

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