Re: GNUstep on windows

[Christopher Armstrong]

On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:44 -0500, Adrian Robert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> >  also started writing some guides to using GNUstep. What I've written
> > so far can be found at:
> > http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/objc.pdf
> 
> This looks very nice!  Have you seen:
> 
> http://gnustep.org/resources/documentation/Developer/Base/ 
> ProgrammingManual/manual_toc.html
> 
> It might be more efficient to improve / update this (and perhaps also  
> make it more visible to downloaders / users of GNUstep) than starting  
> fresh.  On the other hand, this document is rather long, and perhaps  
> you are shooting for a shorter document just on the basics.  This  
> would be a good addition, assuming there aren't already references  
> covering this at http://gnustep.org/developers/documentation.html .

Yep, I've used the Base manual to get a better feel for what's possible
with Objective-C and GNUstep. I wanted to document, in a further manual
(base.pdf) how to use more obscure gnustep-base features, like calendar
dates and that, and stuff that's not well documented, but important,
like property lists. I definetely need to have a look at other people's
docs and see what's already covered. I'd certainly like to incorporate
other people's work to save rewriting what they may have already well
covered.

This was supposed to be more of an Objective-C introduction, but with
GNUstep as the runtime library.

> > http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/appkit.pdf
> 
> This is a good start, and the GNUstep equivalent here is pretty sparse:
> 
> http://gnustep.org/resources/documentation/Developer/Gui/ 
> ProgrammingManual/manual_toc.html
> 
> Contributions on this would be more than welcome.  However the  
> question is what the focus should be.  My impression is that there  
> are lots of tutorials from Apple and elsewhere (http://gnustep.made- 
> it.com/GSPT/xml/Tutorial_en.html) on basic use of IB / Gorm to build  
> simple GUIs, but much fewer on the actual nuts and bolts of using the  
> AppKit libraries, which you need to know to get beyond toy apps.  I'm  
> talking about Views, drawing, controllers, responder chain, matrixes,  
> standard and clever delegation strategies, and so on.  Apple has a  
> lot of material here, but it tends to be divided up piecemeal and  
> also sometimes mixed in with Apple-specific stuff.  This state is  
> livable, but it would be nice to have a general GNUstep intro to  
> using the AppKit library.

My focus is to show people, coming from no experience (ie. never seen
Cocoa, don't want to go near Apple) how to use GNUstep. I don't believe
we should rely on Apple documentation, as we would be expected in some
instances to move independently (especially if we start adding
innovations they haven't. We are allowed to innovate, aren't we?). We
should have documentation that stands on its own, and where I may write
something from learning from the Apple documentation, I'd like something
GNUstep-specific, not "go and read the Apple documentation for further
info."

I was hoping to really show how to do things, not just say "goto the
makefile manual, read up on how to create a makefile for an app, then
compile the following code and see how it works." I wanted to show them
how to write the makefile, what it means, what they can add to it to
customise it to their needs etc. My main gripes are with the current
makefile manual, which I believe is sparse and out of date (an opinion
based on experience, you may feel differently). I know I had trouble
with it, trying to get things to compile under GNUstep, which should be
easy, I know, but it still took me a while. 

Unfortunately, time will be restricted for me over the coming summer and
beyond, so what I've done may be a little neglected while I take up
employment for the next six months. 

Chris

-- 
Christopher Armstrong <carmstrong at fastmail dot com dot au>