Re: Comments on the website from people on twitter...

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Pirmin Braun wrote:
> maybe the world has changed in favour for Web UI instead of Desktop UI?
As a "hype" yes. As real usage, I don't know.
> For newcomers spending educational time on building Web Apps makes more sense 
> than digging into NSView.
> Those who really want to build Desktop Applications will head for Mac OS X as 
> the real thing anyway. From what I saw at FOSDEM, everybody has got a Mac Book.
Because it is "in" and it works. I'd love to get there with my Linux or 
BSD laptops. But GNUstep is a far cry.. and the OS underneath is 
primitive. That together, makes me always use it as a "second tier" 
laptop, as much as I love it.
> The Desktop Apps like Mail.app from GNUStep are nice and I love them. But this 
> is the same love as to old motorcylces that remind me of my youth. Any host OS 
> has got those Apps already out of the box.
Well, I work "in the web" a bit like you. I live from it. And I hate it 
enough. It is powerful and has many advantages. But no mail client be 
considered something serious. I find google mail a joke (and use it only 
because it being a web app makes it accesisble) as are OWA and even the 
very "advanced" yahoo mail... at the end it is a JS and HTML hack and it 
you will get into corners. Yahoo mail shows a lot of effort... little 
stability :)

So I see it the other way: enterprise apps are going into the cloud. Now 
and for the next years. A lot of bad can be said and perhaps afterwards 
something better will emerge, but for now that is certainty.

However, I find myself in the opposite direction at work: sometimes 
certain tasks can still only be solved nicely with a local app (be it 
desktop, laptop, tablet). And bridging the two words  is what is useful. 
You want to bring the web to a desk app, I want it the other way.
> I think, adding a GNUStep Framework to build fancy, industrial-strength, high 
> performance/small footprint Web Apps in no time would boost interest. Once 
> there was WebObjects. Now there is IntarS and I'd be happy to contribute.
> Have a look: 
> http://pirmin.de/GSWeb/Aprica3000230.woa/?pw=root&loginname=Administrator
> Anybody interested to help? Since we're a commercial Open Source company, there 
> is also money available.
It's sad that WO is somehow lingering and that we had two competing 
implementations... at the end we need proabably something higher level 
too. Many thoughts, many ideas

Riccardo