Re: OpenOffice.org on OS X and GNUstep

[Sean Fulton]

On 2005-10-07 10:23:07 -0400, Adrian Robert <arobert@cogsci.ucsd.edu> said:

> On Oct 6, 2005, at 10:17 AM, Stefan Urbanek wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Following article made me think:
> >
> > http://macslash.org/article.pl? sid=05/10/05/1132218&mode=thread&threshold=-1
> >
> > What do you think about showing, in some official way, to the  OO.org 
> > development
> > community, that there is GNUstep that can be used as an option for  creating at
> > least some parts of OO.org OS X port? I mean, main argument should be:
> > - if they would use GNUstep, they will widen developer and support  
> > base to those
> > who do not own a Mac and therefore do not have OS X
> > - on OS X they would use Cocoa, on other platforms they can use  GNUstep for
> > development
> > - with GCC 4+ it would be possible to mix Objective C (cocoa) code  with C++
> > (oo.org) code
> >
> > I think they are not very aware of GNUstep.
>
> We should definitely try to raise their awareness.  I see on a  
> referenced page there that they are thinking Cocoa, which is good,  but 
> my biggest fear is still that they would undertake the effort  using 
> Carbon, which other big and recent projects have done (Mozilla  port, 
> Andrew Choi's Emacs and XEmacs ports, etc.).  I think this  usually 
> happens when the developers in charge come from a Carbon and/ or C++ 
> background or start from an OS 9 base.  It's unfortunate, both  because 
> it shuts out GNUstep, and because using the higher-level  Cocoa API is 
> cleaner, easier, and more maintainable.

If they're paying attention at all they won't even consider Carbon. I 
believe Apple has essentially told developers that Carbon is dead. If 
you want your app to run (well) on OS X on Intel, you have to develop 
with Cocoa. Porting something to Carbon now would be a waste of time.

> Case in point is Emacs on Aqua (http://emacs-on-aqua.sf.net), where  
> the code for the Cocoa/GNUstep windowing system support is half the  
> size of the other two (X and W32), yet provides greater  functionality. 
>  That's for emacs-20, but this is remaining true in my  porting effort 
> for emacs-23 (http://emacs-app.sf.net), where  comparison with the 
> Carbon port is possible.  (Carbon's about 2x  Cocoa -- W32 is about 
> 2.8x (though that includes a unix compatibility  layer), and X is over 
> 3x, though this is Xlib we're talking about..)
>
> Emacs on Aqua (not to toot my own horn here) is also an excellent  
> illustration of Cocoa-GNUstep compatibility.  There are only a few  
> #ifdefs distinguishing between the two, most relating to the fact  
> Emacs goes to pretty low levels to do text rendering.  (OOO probably  
> needs to as well -- won't get away with just slapping in an  NSTextView 
> there -- but this code can be encapsulated well.)  There's  no 
> significant functionality that the port on OS X has that the  GNUstep 
> version doesn't.  (Now if I tried to implement the printing  framework 
> users keep asking for, maybe that would change.)
>
> GNUMail is the other major cross-platform app I know about that  
> demonstrates the same points -- and I think there are others?
>
> BTW, is gcc-4.1 needed to link separate C++ and ObjC files, or just  to 
> mix in the same file?  (In Emacs, ObjC code lives in its own  files, 
> and provides a C interface for external interaction, though  there's 
> only C, no C++ there.)

        S.