Re: Question about the "look" of GNUstep

[Iain Hallam]

anstouh@yahoo.com.au wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Feb 2002, JW wrote:
>
>
> > I'm just wondering if there's any plans, works in progress or hopes to
> > "upgrade" GNUstep's "looks", add theme support or anything to make it
> > look a little nicer, more modern?


As I understand the previous discussion on this topic a while ago, 
themes would be welcomed (as long as the default look were to be kept as 
NeXT) but would have to be implemented very carefully. I believe that a 
good example of this is the Amiga's GUI system, ReAction. It's based on 
the idea that anyone can code a drop-in replacement for a current widget 
and just replace the <widget>.class file. The problem with this is that 
each method needs to be implemented anew, so there might be some use in 
a prototypical widget for each class. This way, each widget draws itself 
when called. Otherwise, you're going to be stretching bitmaps all over 
the place. (N.B., this could be done with a vector format like SVG, in 
which case there wouldn't be so much overhead, and it would probably 
look better.)


> > Is there any possibility of using QT/KDE widgets, maybe via some sort
> > of binding/wrapper/bridge or whatever you want to call it? I'm wild
> > over Aqua but I'm sure due to Apple's harsh legal actions in the past,
> > anything that looks remotely like Aqua on a non-Apple platform it
> > totally "out". IMHO KDE is the second nicest looking thing after Aqua,
> > that's why I thought I'd mention it.
<snip>
> The GNUstep UI is divided into two parts, and it's the backend that
> determines the display, I understand. A new backend could be written that
> used KDE widgets to display stuff. I got this knowledge from the question
> about the application kit being implemented in GTK in the GNUstep faq. Of
> course, if I'm wrong, don't fry me, this is just what I got from the faq!
>
> I'm just wondering---how would menus be implement if such an idea were
> adopted? Would they come up as standard GTK/KDE/Windows/Motif/Whatever
> menus, or would they be NeXTSTEP-style ones in a GTK/KDE/Windows/
> Motif/Whatever widget-style?
>
> Also, if it was implemented, it'd obey the theme rules of the thing it was
> coded as, would it? If I had MacOS-style menu bars in KDE, I'd get
> MacOS-style menu bars in GNUstep apps, yes?


Implementing a whole new backend would be different from providing theme 
support (Disclaimer: IANAGP (I Am Not A GNUStep Programmer) ) It would , 
however, be a good way of integrating GNUStep with other environments, 
like KDE, or even Motif. GNUStep has its own ways of drawing things when 
it is installed alone (what's that distribution that does this?) but 
could target other environments when installed alongside them.

- Iain.

P.S. If I've got things wrong here, feel free to correct me - I've not 
been through the code yet :-)