Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Sergii Stoian]

Michael Thaler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > Because it has professional look and feel. I don't like any theme for Qt  
> > or GTK+.
>
> Sorry, I don't buy that a professional look has to be gray and dull. 
> For Qt/KDE there is a CDE theme. But I doubt that many people use it.

My meaning of "professional look" have nothing with "gray and dull".
Windows 2000 has professional look and feel, OPENSTEP has. Professional 
GUI is a GUI which doesn't bother over time and don't take much 
attention. And I feel that CDE GUI created not by designer but by 
programmers. It's a big difference. NS/OS GUI created by talented (IMHO) 
designer.

> > Finally maybe you want Leopard look of GNUstep applications as default?
>
> Having a MacBook with Snow Leopard, yes I would love to have a Linux desktop 
> looking as elegant and polished as Snow Leopard. 

So why just not steal Leo GUI?

> > WindowMaker is window manager, it's not DE. People tend to use desktop  
> > environment.
>
> I know. But how many people use WindowMaker with KDE or Gnome?

Using WindowMaker with KDE or GNOME has little sense, IMHO. I'd rather 
use Qt or GTK+ applications with WindowMaker as is.

> > What are they interested in? Let me guess: Qt(KDE) or GTK(GNOME)?
>
> My former institute used KDE as desktop. But people usually worked with 
> Mathematica or MatLab. If we did coding it was mostly low-level numerical stuff 
> in Fortran, C or C++. I doubt that it is a good idea to target researchers 
> with gnustep. What advantage would gnustep give them?
>
> > So we need MacOS style GUI, right?
>
> In my personal opinion it would be nice to have a MacOS X style GUI. But I 
> know this is a matter of taste and not everyone things that the MacOS X GUI is 
> great.

A lot of people likes it, much more than "dull and gray". ;)

> > Another day Apple discards GCC in favor of LLVM. We need to quickly adopt  
> > this
> > change after Apple? That's why GNUstep in it's current state today.
>
> Well, for me llvm and having a garbage collector and blocks would make gnustep 
> much more interesting.

Sure. But Even if GNUstep will have GC, LLVM and blocks users still be 
unsatisfied because of UI incompleteness.

> > And I see no problem using Opera or Firefox. That is the problem I'm trying
> > to attract attention: GNUstep developers always ready to start  
> > mega-projects
> > but only few individuals trying to make GNUstep finished.
>
> There is no problem using Opera or Firefox with gnustep, except they do not 
> integrate well. But what is acutally the point of using gnustep/etoile as a 
> desktep and then using Opera or Firefox? 

Because of lack of developer resources. Browser is a huge and complex 
project by itself. Second, it's really hard to implement such complex 
project as web browser that based on incomplete and buggy application kit.

> And what about an office suite? a good mail client (well, I don't know how 
> good Mail.app is).

Office suite another big project. Who will write it? On the other hand, 
GNUmail was good enough last time I used it. But it definitely needs 
polishing and bug fixing.

> My personal plan is to port an open source application from MacOS X to gnustep 
> because I think without applications noone will use gnustep. Unfortunately I  
> am currently quite busy at work, so that I don't have much time.

What application you want to port? My personal feeling - you should port 
only those applications that you need to use. Don't try port everything. 
  Try to focus on little useful thing instead of starting another big 
project that never aimed to be completed.

--
Sergii Stoian