Re: GNUstep roadmap (was Re: [Suggestion] GNUstep-test for quality control)

[Helge Hess]

On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 09:47 AM, Philip Mötteli wrote:
> I mean, do you know, why NeXT invented the OpenStep API? It's exactly 
> for this reason: To integrate their infamous great API into existing 
> environments like MS-Windows and Sun-Solaris.

Oh please. NeXT neither invented OpenStep with that goal nor did 
OpenStep *ever* integrate very well into Windows. Which is largely due 
to the "look&feel" being part of AppKit.
This also results in all those problems GNUstep has in conjunction with 
other environments even on a Linux platform, say KDE or GNOME. It 
doesn't integrate at all.

That a cross platform UI almost always su** is also very well 
demonstrated by Swing. It "almost" looks like the native platform and 
yet it doesn't in obvious ways. Just like OpenStep/NT.

Actually my personal conclusion is that you need to write a specific UI 
per target platform. Now the question is whether we can still reuse 
core technology, and I would say, yes.

> They, exactly as Gnustep, didn't have the resources, to write all the 
> drivers and other code and wrappers to make their system compatibel to 
> the other world. So they standardized their API and implemented it on 
> every important platform. That way, people who wrote software for NeXT 
> could just recompile it for a chosen other platform and it runned. 
> They reused, what others had already done.

Even with OpenStep/NT you always had two make special variants of your 
UI for the various platforms. "just recompile" is a myth for "cross 
operation systems".
What worked *very* well was NeXTstep/OpenStep as a complete system on 
different platforms, eg also in conjunction with FAT binaries. *That* 
was really cool and worked really well.

> > To make gnustep compatible with macosx is an immediate goal not the 
> > long term one.
> In my eyes we need that to attract more people. And the more people we 
> have, the more complete the whole thing will be, which will in turn 
> attract even more people, which will complete even more… It's a 
> vicious circle.

... going on for several years now.

Greets
  Helge
--
Reich wird man nicht durch das, was man verdient.
Reich wird man durch das,               was man nicht ausgibt.
-- Henry Ford