Re: Camaelon <-> GNUstep

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 25 Aug 2006, at 10:16, Marc Brünink wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I guess everybody knows it already:-) Yesterday evening we  
> installed etoile on Solaris 10. And it was the first time we took a  
> look at Camaelon. Now I just have to yell across the list:
> "ITS GREAT!"
>
> Actually Camaelon fixes one of the three things I really hate about  
> GNUstep. I will express it in 4 tiny letters: G R E Y

The GNUstep GUI has had user definable colors for a very looong time.  
You can change colors on a per-user (or per application for a user)  
basis by simply adding new system color specifications in the  
defaults system See the NSColor documentation.

> Now I'm wondering why this was not synced into GNUstep yet.  
> Actually I did not look at the code but I guess it is gooood code.

Because Nicolas was not happy with the state of his Camaelon code,  
and wanted to reworlk it before merging it in, and hasn't found time.

> Sometimes I have the feeling that every third email on this list is  
> about having not enough developers. And how to attract more. I  
> think this is pretty easy: Do not use grey! Its not about the  
> codebase and clean or functional code at all. Its about the look  
> and feel.
> If it looks bad most of the people will not even look deep enough  
> to see  the code. They will just vanish.
> However if we have a good look and feel (without installing an  
> additional bundle) people will come, take a look take a closer look  
> and finally will see the code. Even if everything is broken: At  
> least they have seen it! And the most important thing: They will  
> come back.
> (Do anyone remember the gorm 1.0 announcement at slashdot?)

I *like* the default scheme much more than other systems... so I find  
the argument about changing the look to attract developers very  
unconvincing.  However, providing screenshots of alternative color  
schemes won't do any harm and might help.