Re: Antwort: Re: import vs include Re: Porting autogsdoc to OSX

[Marcus Müller]

On Wednesday, February 27, 2002, at 06:14 PM, David.Ayers@brainag.com 
wrote:
> The real question seems to be, does it make any sense to invest so much
> work into seprating this code into a seperate library/bundle, just so 
> that
> GNUStep apps can be ported to Cocoa easily? Or does it suffice to have 
> base
> compiled under OS X? I must say I haven't formed an opinion yet, but I'm
> also sure the implecations reach very far. It wouldn't just be matter of
> base, but would imply any framework/library which clones a Cocoa API 
> must
> be devided in a pure API library and extension library.
>
> In effect:
> base    - would implement OPENSTEP and Apples (current) API
> baseExt - would implement all other things
>         - would need to compile with base & OS X/Foundation [Headers] 
> (ie
> [...]

Yes, an answer to these questions was exactly what I was looking for in 
my initial post. Actually I was aware of the resource constraints, so I 
asked if people think that development time should be spent on this 
issue. What followed, in my opinion, was a sometimes heated debate over 
the goals of GNUstep and prioritization of that goals. Nevertheless I 
found it very constructive, although my initial questions haven't been 
answered yet.

There seem to be two major interest groups:

1) OS X developers who want to "embrace GNUstep" and port their Apps to 
GNUstep - but who also want to take some functionality from GNUstep and 
put it to use on OS X.
2) GNUstep developers who want to extend GNUstep and build applications 
using GNUstep, without necessity of porting them to other "OpenStep 
compliant" systems.

Technically the proposal you make in your above statement would suit the 
needs of group 1), whereas group 2) would not necessarily benefit of it. 
As a matter of fact, group 2) would rather like to avoid that as it 
could certainly break things currently working during the migration.

> But the AppOSXGNUStepCore.app will not be able to DO to other Cocoa 
> apps!
> It couldn't even Cut&Paste and Drag&Drop to other Cocoa apps! Does this
> alone mean that GNUStep apps must use Cocoa to be integrated with other
> Cocoa apps on OS X? Here I recall the was discussion a while back when
> talking about X integration and the Pasteboard! (Wow, I think this is 
> the
> showstopper and I formed my opinion. We should divide the libraries and 
> be
> able to compile CORE-Extensions agains Cocoa frameworks.)

I wouldn't go that far. During the years I've become more pragmatic. 
Although DO is a very cool technology to have, there's a surprisingly 
small number of applications depending on it. Some time ago I'd liked to 
have DO between GNUstep and OS X, but because of a natural lack in that 
respect I had to reconsider my design. I'm very happy using XML-RPC now 
(and able to interface with a lot more clients btw.).

Cheers,

  Marcus

--
Marcus Mueller  .  .  .  crack-admin/coder ;-)
Mulle kybernetiK  .  http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com
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