summing up my opinions on gnustep future directions

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hello to all,

    I followed eagerly all the discussions here in the list about future
directions of GNUstep, developing problems, applications etc. Everyone has
his idea and I'll scribble my humble opinion in this email. Maybe someone
shares it.

I still think that GNUstep could be the spirit of NeXTstep living on in the
unix world of today. So I wouldn't say it should compete directly with KDE
and Gnome. This is why I think ProjectCenter should go on, become as similar
as possible to ProjectBuilder, including a simple but powerful coloring
editor, integration with graphical layout maker and automatic makefile
generation (as to follow PB). WHy that? I, the lover of commad line, vi and
console? Well, because in the case of projects involving serveal objective-c
files, reusable code, controllers, GUI layouts this is just a great tool. it
is a kind of IDE which integates well in obj-c. I isn't a shame as using
visual-basic-crap. It remains rationale programming? Hard-core fans can
still  write theri own files using renaissance and vi. As sson as i get
GNUstep working I'll install projectCenter and gorm. Why was NeXT so
stronggly loved? So that its fame still echoes today? Its development werew
great, powerful, professional. New developers could join GNUstep just
because they got frustrated using Xlib directly or messing around with the
toolkit-of-the-moment. GNUstep is more than that.

The other point are applications. It is true that you can run mozilla and
the gimp and GNUmail. But heck, the first two have terrible interfaces
compared to the third. Also the two interfaces are differnt.
So creating applications for GNUstep that maybe already exists isn't stupid:
they would receive the correct user interface.
OmniWeb is one of the nicest browsers I ever saw. Itues and Quicktime are
superior to windows media player. Why? not strictly for the performance, but
for the interface.

This is why I have faith in GNUstep, folow it closely and am eager to
complete my installation, help in testing and improvment. And who knows If I
start developing for it. Never too late to learn to code.

The last thing: GNUstep is nice because it interfaces with X11: this is,
maybe now, a bit slow still> But it allows exporting the whole as an X11
display. DirectFB would be interesting, getting closer to NeXT/Apple way...

The last thing on uther interfaces.
I like NeXT look and I hope GNUstep will remain as possible as a visual
clone of NeXT/Open-step.
I wold try to implement "skinning" 'a la window-maker, amybe to match those
themes. That would yield visual improvment for many users, it would
integrate visually better with the wm... I'd wait for a real "theme" that
changes totally the appearance. Even if they look nice on the screenshots, I
usually find they can mess too much up the interface, distorting the
original interface design. This is not always true, but it happens. So if
someone wants to implement it, please do it carefully. A obj-c window-maker,
skinnable in pair, visually similar to wmaker ("neat") but more thightly
integrated wit GNUstep would be a good thing. Someone is working in this
direction IIRC.

Sorry if I typed a bit in a hurry, I wanted to get my thoughts down. I read
so many different opinions and different directions I wanted to touch all
points and say mine.

Ric