Re: The Path of GNUstep (Was: Re: Gnustep + mac + windows? Possib Re: The Path of GNUstep (Was: Re: Gnustep + mac + windows? Possib

[Pascal Bourguignon]

> From: Stefan Urbanek <urbanek@host.sk>
> Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 00:14:57 +0100
> 
> [...]
> Here I have to agree with Nicolas and I hate to say it, but today
> many people are attracted by the look. That phenomenon does not
> apply only on the software. Personaly I am fine with the next-look
> which does not distract me, but...

I would  not mind themes if  they were "lightweight", that  is, if the
default would  stay to  the NeXTstep look  and feel  without overhead.
That is,  if they were  implemented as subclasses which  poseAs: their
superclasses (NSWindow, NSMenuCell, etc) in a different library that I
could avoid linking.

Note a difficulty  of themes with X: you have  to have matching themes
in GNUstep and  in the window manager, with  two kinds of programming,
and two places to configure them.  Messy!


Anyway,  I can  think of  dozens of  programs to  write  before adding
themes...  For example, a  MS-Windows backend would probably have more
impact on potential users of GNUstep.


> [...]
> One has to know both, good and bad, to be able to compare and tell
> what is good and what is bad. Many people know only one thing and
> will say that it is the best just because they do not know the
> other. We have to show them the good. And because there are several
> possible audiences, we have show to each audience what is good for
> it. 
> [...]

Since  GNUstep implements  the OpenStep  API, the  GNUstep environment
should have about the same qualities and advantages than OPENSTEP.  We
could  just take the  ads and  evangelizing from  NeXT and  rerun them
substituting 'GNU' for 'NeXT'... :-)


Same about the documentation.   There's no "concept" documentation for
GNUstep,  because  up  to  now,  we  use  and  read  either  the  NeXT
documentation or  the MacOSX documentation.  Of course,  we still need
an Open Documentation for GNUstep.  But the need has not been pressing
because we already have these references.

-- 
__Pascal_Bourguignon__                   http://www.informatimago.com/
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 The name is Baud,...... James Baud.