Embedded GNUstep - new rumours about embedded MacOS X and call for support

[address@hidden]

Hi all GNUsteppers,
there is new rumour about an embedded MacOS X (aka OSXlite, OSXmobile
etc.):

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/12/20061219140034.shtml
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2313
http://www.looprumors.com/LoopBlackPopup.php?mac-mobile,4046720790

All this shows where the industry is heading to: enhanced full
operating systems that run on (open) Smartphones and Settop boxes. And
it shows what the future needs: something besides Symbian, Qt and
Windows Mobile.

Therefore, I would like to take this as the opportunity to make a new
"call for support" for the embedded GNUstep fork "mySTEP". The goals of
mySTEP are exactly those described by the articles that I have cited
above: provide a stripped down version of GNUstep that is 100%
compatible to a Mac with Cocoa and is heavily optimized to run with the
memory and processor constraints of a Linux based PDA or Smartphone.

The status of mySTEP is already quite good: most Foundation and many
AppKit classes are working well on all Sharp Zaurus models and on Acer
n30 with Letux Linux  - and there are already two Linux based
Smartphones we want to port to next year and a third one is a good
candidate. Some recent developments are native/binary NIB loading,
@interface-compatibility of all classes to MacOS X 10.4, support for
shaped windows (e.g. rounded corners), a simplified WebKit, NSIndexSet,
NSIndexPath, basic PDF printing, and (not yet working) a complete
rewrite of the DO system to fully support NSMessagePort and
NSSocketPort, and too many others to list here.

Compared to GNUstep, QuantumSTEP is a stand-alone system including
application suite and window manager. It provides all that is required
for personal information management, mobile mail, web browsing, input
managers etc. on a handheld device. And sometimes it includes even the
X11 server (which is not readily available for a Zaurus). So it is more
like a mySTEP based "GPE".

Making mySTEP a smooth, reliable and finally useful system is something
different and therefore, if you are interested in supporting this
project, please start to look into the source code, submit patches,
contact me by mail - or during the planned presentation at FOSDEM 2007.

Nikolaus Schaller
Maintainer of mySTEP/QuantumSTEP
http://www.quantum-step.com/wiki.php?page=mySTEP