Re: ObjC documentation

[Nicolas Roard]

On 2003-10-04 23:11:51 +0000 Ritesh Kumar <ritesh.removethis@cs.unc.edu> wrote:

> Hi!
>          I was (trying to :-( ) go through the ObjC documentation on the
> www.gnustep.org website. However, I am still not able to figure out a lot
> many things related to the way ObjC is object oriented. I am having a hard
> time trying to understand the language and that's a prerequisite before I
> move towards the library.
>         I got interested in the project after discussing about the fallacies of
> the C runtime system in comp.linux.development.apps and got some
> references to GNUStep. I am very interested in the project. I will
> appreciate a lot if you can give me some pointers where I can find more
> about objective-C both from a developers perspective and a language
> analysts' perspective.

Well, I have compiled a list of availables documentations about GNUstep
and Objective-C at http://www.roard.com/docs (see also 
http://www.gnustep.org/resources/resources.html)
try to read in particularly this excellent ObjC manual 
http://toodarkpark.org/computers/objc/
-- it's the original ObjC manual from NeXT, and it is very complete and well 
written.

>         I am still wondering why this project hasn't got the mass attention as
> GNOME or KDE gets... strikes very odd! If I am thinking correctly (please

IMHO :
Well, lack of publicity, plus some architectural problems for the implementation
(a display postscript should be required theorically ...), plus the fact that 
many
people didn't knew NeXT so they didn't saw what was the advantage comparing
to more easy approach like KDE or GNOME (ie, rebuild everything, but
incrementally, so people could use them and get hooked, then rebuild
everything for v2, etc.).
Plus the fact that KDE and GNOME try to mimick more known desktop, while
GNUstep try to build something similar to NeXTSTEP for the look and feel,
but there wasn't millions of NeXTSTEP users .. (explain the services..)
And GNUstep is an implementation of OpenStep, it's a strength, but it was also a
problem in that perspective, because you couldn't really use it and see the
bonus of OpenStep while the implementation wasn't enoughly complete.
Now that GNUstep is somewhat useable to program GUI applications and
use them -- even if it is far from perfect and bug free -- there is an increase
of interest from people.

--
Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com>
PGP : http://www.roard.com/download/key.gpg.asc
Work for something because it is good, not just because
it stands a chance to succeed.  - Vaclav Havel