Re: Boiling the Oceans [was Re: GNUstep Live on OSnews]

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,


On 31/07/2017 20:01, Steven R. Baker wrote:
> My computing needs are simple: I need a mail client, a calendar, an 
> address book, a web browser, and emacs. I need a few other things, but 
> I'll make those myself. The basics are listed here. GNUstep already 
> has excellent options for each of those categories, except a web 
> browser. But here's the funny thing: none of the other environments 
> have a web browser choice that's a compelling choice over Firefox anyhow.

Exactly, at the end you have "something" + Firefox anyway. Sadly firefox 
is moving to a quite ugly UI without menus, preferences inside panes.. 
so it is "alien" everywhere. Quite different e.g. from SeaMonkey which 
as a much more classic and enjoyable interface.
For the rest, GS apps on my ThinkPad(s) too.


> There are a few necessities that are missing before I can claim 
> "complete desktop experience", and a lot of these things were 
> mentioned in the LiveCD comments thread. The first thing I noticed 
> when I set up my ThinkPad with WindowMaker + GNUstep is that the media 
> keys don't work. It's an easy fix, and I'll do that.

Some of those Keys are actually not GS, but go through X11 directly, right?
What kind of keyboard layout do you have on your TP?

> We need a few more preferences panes for configuring PulseAudio 
> input/output options, a small app for talking to NetworkManager for 
> configuring wifi, etc. After that, it's a matter of shipping a sane 
> "default configuration", much like Betrand describes. There are some 
> other things that David mentioned in a few mails, but it mostly boils 
> down to "make sure things implement the freedesktop specifications."

Yep, we all need work there, sadly, a lot of this is highly unportable 
between OSs and also needs privilege escalation stuff... so I never 
started working on that.

> 2) a personal finance application for budgeting, and a GTD 
> application, both with the goal of also being available on Windows and 
> Mac from the same codebase. I'd like for these applications to be 
> examples of how you can do cross platform really well using GNUstep.

That's a new project. Good luck.

> 4) obviously, fixing bugs as I find them in these two previous activities.

This is a precious things: it improves the whole landscae.

> There are currently a few barriers to me making really good progress 
> on this:
>
> 1) HiDPI not being fully baked is causing me a lot of usability 
> problems, so I wind up working on my older systems. Which I don't 
> always have nearby. I would *really* like to help with this, but a lot 
> of it is way out of my depth. If someone who has the right knowledge 
> would like to discuss this with me and help me get a better 
> understanding, I'd love to take it on.

Better Hi-Res support is needed also when running on Windows and it 
limits quite a bit the usefulness of GS apps on modern Win8 and Win10 
install which usually render UI elements at a scaled percentage.
However, work on your issue in Terminal is ongoing.

Let's hack! (or continue to..)

Riccardo